Age? Health? Good fortune? Whatever the reason, I’ve come to see life this way: there’s no greater wealth than this moment, this breath, and this body. In that light, there can be only one goal, one challenge, one mission worth pursuing: to make what remains of it an act of giving, while wishing absolutely nothing for myself. Call it impossible. Call it a prayer. And though I may forget, or […]
At seven millimeters, my new huaraches are the thinnest, most comfortable I’ve worn. And after a few walks to get used to them, I’ve now taken them for a run. These sandals will likely be the last bit of footwear I use, as I gradually ease into walking and running entirely barefoot — because I’ve realized that for me, the best, most comfortable, most reliable shoes I can wear are […]
Whatever the medium or craft — music, language, carpentry, working with the soil — the virtuoso is, first and foremost, a life-long learner — a child in an aging body whose heart and mind are an image in kind of the flowering cosmos. If it were only a matter of skill, the word virtuoso wouldn’t have the meaning it does. The world would be overrun with them. And yet that, […]
I dreamed all night of the perfect sentence, And then awakened to a perfect, wordless dawn. The vessel creaks. A wind is coming on. . [ 1360 ]
A curious thing, and to me a beautiful thing, is how all of this life, and yet none of it, seems real. For me it’s a vivid, personal fiction, a novel, a poem. The days are a series of pages, full of lines and paragraphs connected by a common thread, and that thread is the familiar idea of myself, which I’ve been creating and imagining from moment to moment since […]
So far as it pertains to collecting and preserving what I feel are the best of my old writings and drawings, the time has come — if it has not passed already — to lay this work to rest. As such, I have tried to make Poems, Notes, and Drawings cohesive and readable from beginning to end. In that regard, I think of it as a book; I also see […]
January 10, 1976. Forty-six years.Back then, my father’s mother referred to us as “two children playing.”She was seventy-five at the time. She’s still right. January 10, 2022 Canvas 1,130 January 10, 2018 . [ 1346 ]
I raked some leaves that didn’t need raking, Just to feel my muscles and lungs. I walked some ground that didn’t need walking, To see how the sky would respond. I watched some birds that didn’t need watching, I ate an orange that didn’t need eating, I thought a thought that didn’t need thinking, And the thought thought the same about me. Then I sat, then I stood, then I […]
The great naturalist, Edward O. Wilson, has died. But the world has not lost him, as the common phrase goes. He lives on his books, in his colleagues, and in the countless people he has influenced and taught. He lives on in the environment and ecosystems he helped and is still helping to save. It is not necessary to meet and know someone personally to benefit from his or her […]
William Michaelian 