As long as this body is in the world, and as long as it remains lit from within, the urge, the desire, the need, is to tell all — the instinct, the drive, the purpose, the dream. I am my own living and breathing confession, and by this confession, my life is fulfilled. I walked very early this morning on streets shimmering with particles of ice. The sky was almost […]
It needed many years, but when I finally realized that as a writer I would not be famous or successful in a way that would pay the bills, and when I understood what a lucky thing that was, the self-imposed burden of the idea fell away, leaving me light, free, ready, and glad for whatever may come. Painful as it was, I do not regret the process; I am not […]
Parallel worlds exist and interact with our world, physicists say. And the lucky old man reading smiles at the thought of his family. December 28, 2019 Everywhere and All I was stretched out on my back for a rest yesterday, when I thought, Very well, then, here I am, on a bed, in a room, in a house, on a planet circling a sun, in a solar system, in […]
We live in a house full of old furniture, old books, old photographs, old dishes, old pots and pans, and sundry heirloom antiques. Wouldn’t it be strange if we were to populate it with smart devices — a term itself meant to last no longer than what it was coined to sell? Isn’t it better to speak to each other and to ourselves than to an array of gadgets and […]
What of someone who is happy and joyful, but unable to communicate, while those around him assume he is miserable and sad? And what of those who are miserable and sad, who assume everyone else is? Early morning the day after Christmas — not one soul out to see the frosty rooftops. I saw, or think I saw, an eagle in the neighbor’s fir tree the other day. But it […]
Closing out this quiet round of winter record-keeping, the present offering follows “So Many Angels” and “Between the Ivy and the Big Rhododendron.” I wonder what the old cemetery looks like now, and if it remembers me. A crazy question, I guess. Of course it does. When I Stand When I stand, I marvel at the almost-feeling where my appendix used to be. It’s as if its ancient forgotten […]
Captured in the same breath, so to speak, as “So Many Angels,” I wrote and published two things the following morning. Both strike me as worth preserving. This is the first. Between the Ivy and the Big Rhododendron Yesterday morning in the kitchen we were talking about our old cat, Joe, and how at peace with the world he was in his declining years, which he spent in our […]
On any given day — and all days are given, and never to be taken for granted — what I think, what I know, and whatever conclusions I reach are of such a temporary nature that I can hardly see how they might be useful to another. They are born of what I might call the Montaigneity of the moment, and serve as matches held up in the darkness of […]
When you see young children living and working their beautiful miracles, do you smile and say, They are something at that age, or, We are something at that age? They, or we — the difference, I think, is a great one, and tells much about you. The same might be asked of how you view those who are far ahead of you in years. Because the very young and the […]
From a multiplicity of views, comes a unified result — we children broke God’s window, and let his demons out. About four-thirty this morning, I finished a reading project of many months’ duration: the three-volume Library of America edition of the works of Henry Adams — a beautifully written, thought-provoking collection of history, fiction, and autobiography by a nineteenth century master with a twentieth century vision and beyond. November […]
William Michaelian 