As I sit here watching the world go by, I remind myself that those who sign up to terrorize their fellow human beings suffer from a lifetime of anger, fear, loneliness, and trauma. In this way they’re like the wealthy, powerful bullies whose unconscionable bidding they do. Their outlook is beyond sad. Isolated as they are, seeking security and a sense of belonging in numbers, they epitomize the tragedy of […]
Let’s not rely on teams and committees, congresses and senates, parliaments, houses, and courts. Instead, let’s form choirs for all ages, and from all ethnic backgrounds, and all walks of life. Let’s have a widespread wealth of daily public performances, and broadcast these instead of speeches and news. Let’s remind one another that we’re made not for strife, but for song — indeed, that this grand manifestation we call the […]
I run half a mile more. Sometimes I feel I can run forever. Then I realize I already have, and do, through the mountains, between the stars. I turn a few more pages, tho’ I’ve read all the books, and have been all the characters. And I write a few more words, in this, my present language, Tho’ I’ve already written them all, and said them all, and you’ve read […]
Six breaths a minute — I’m an old locomotive in a cold dark wood — I see covered faces — snow on blood ~ [ 2066 ]
Our questions, problems, troubles are pebbles in a pond. Out of reach, yet they rest in the peace of a quiet mind. If we go in after them, up comes mud. ~ [ 2065 ]
It rained a little during the night — not much, but enough to lighten, maybe even leaven the air, as if the clouds, instead of moving in from the west, arrived from the yeast. Either way, the crust has been dampened, and life is more than a cabaret, it’s a boulangerie. In all but two bedrooms, I dusted and mopped our new floor, which, save for a speck here and […]
A while back I noted reading In Thackeray’s London, written and illustrated by Francis Hopkinson Smith. I’ve since had the good luck of finding In Dickens’s London, published by Smith the following year, in 1914. The book, for which I paid a little under eight dollars, arrived in yesterday’s mail. It’s beautiful, both sturdy and aromatic, with its complex old-paper smell, the kind one might expect from having been unopened […]
Of all the pleasures, of all the joyful sensations, of all that’s charged with balance and meaning, first and foremost is one’s own breath. All others radiate from this single, central, indispensable gift. When we forget this, and are in the habit of taking our breath for granted, we’re more likely to be hasty and fretful, and to fall out of step with life’s natural pace and rhythm. To notice […]
Owing to morning temperatures in the low-twenties, the birdbaths have seized up again. The air, meanwhile, is very dry, the streets are dry, and every bush and twig. Saturday afternoon, I was able to climb onto the roof with our electric blower and hundred-foot extension cord, and blow off all of the debris left behind by the fall storms. The fir needles were deep; the cones were plentiful; and there […]
One thing I’ve learned is to not idealize the past. On the farm, for instance, in those later years before we moved to Oregon, I would eat a fresh lemon a few minutes after rising; then I’d have a small cup of coffee; then, depending on the time of year — our lemon tree was an ever-bearing variety — I’d either have breakfast, or I’d go outside to greet and […]
William Michaelian 