I use words to show none are needed. And I smile. “Brevity Loves Company” Recently Banned Literature, February 4, 2018 Brevity As each petal is wise in the purpose and symmetry of a flower, so must be the words we choose, each an action with a will to bloom. Be brave, be brief, beware the power you wield; thoughtless use is profound abuse. Brevity is depth of character, the […]
In a breath, we greet each other from far-flung corners of the world. As if these primitive computers were the only means at our disposal. “Learning to Fly” Recently Banned Literature, December 13, 2010 Between Friends The mind asks, “Have I really made you faster than I am?” And the computer replies, “I am the mind. But the mind is much more than I am.” [ 447 ]
As mirrors, we serve as invitations to the depth we contain. To observe completely, the observer must be absent. But not nonexistent. Let him be outside, admiring the flowers. Better yet, let him be the flowers. She was a snowstorm. He was a pair of little bare feet. They met in the street. [ 445 ]
There are two houses in the neighborhood with star jasmine growing on a trellis by the front door. The plants are in full bloom, and their scent’s so strong, walking through it is like being in a dense fog. Indeed, it seems odd the particles aren’t visible, for one’s spirit-ship is immediately lost on the jasmine sea of it. And yet, passing by in the evening, or early in the […]
Yesterday afternoon, from the front window, I watched a pair of sparrows feeding on the tiny flies, if that’s what they are, in the heavy crop of purslane at the shoreline-edge of the garden. But I think they might also have been eating the purslane itself, because several times one or the other tugged at a leaf with energy and enthusiasm. But only now, after many hours have passed, and […]
At the rate I’m going, steady though it may be, it will take me several years to finish reading all fourteen volumes of Thoreau’s journal. I hope I have those years. But if I don’t, I’m happy to have had those leading up to them. And when I say hope, I mean I’m willing to live them if they’re given me, and that I understand very well they might not […]
We’ve heard a number of times that a solitary blueberry bush won’t produce fruit on its own, that at least one other must be growing and blooming nearby to ensure pollination. And yet we have one plant and it produces fruit, and the nearest others that we’re aware of are hundreds of feet away at a house one street to the south and two houses to the west, with structures, […]
My father always said that no one taught him to swim, that he simply jumped into the wide mossy ditch with all the other boys and learned then and there on his own. He did not say he had already learned by watching, while dancing naked with glee on the bank in the hot summer sun. Some of the same vineyards that were there in his childhood were there in […]
All too often, those of us who call ourselves writers speak of the books we read as if their very mention were an indication of our learning, depth, and worth. I speak about them because I love them, knowing full well that even after they are read, I will be at a loss to explain the profound or mean effect they have had on me, my understanding, and my thinking. […]
The assumption that it’s difficult is what makes it so. But then, so does any assumption at all. You Think You Know Yourself You think you know yourself — then comes a word, a phrase, a night, a moon, an oak in rust on a time-worn hill, leaves, twigs, and cloud-debris, horseless riders faceless until they swing right in front of you — did you dream them or did […]
William Michaelian 
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