and this is the world in the form of a map mountains are knuckles and nations are blotches of failed pigment and this is my skin and that is where rivers run * I really do forget the drawings, and the poems. I call this a blessing — to be surprised, upon finding them later, and to feel almost as if they were done by someone else, as, in a […]
I love this drawing, and its gentle simplicity. But I love what I said about drawing every bit as much, because it’s such an apt description of how I feel about art. The figure itself took a lifetime and about two minutes to make; or, to put it another way, it all happened in a breath. ~ [ 1980 ]
Unhinged as they are, if you take them apart and place them at different vantage points in your nearest ancient cathedral, thus making it possible to meet these three saints on their own terms, I think you will find them remarkably familiar, and in a personal way that leads you to consider some of your own saintly behavior — the doors you hold open for others; the children whose shoes […]
There they are at the window, each knowing what the other knows, but knowing it so differently, that, without each other, their knowledge would be incomplete. The truth is, they depend so fully on each other that they are really one, not two. And so what we have here is our human story in miniature. ~ [ 1969 ]
And Man probably reveals more about me than it does the human condition, though I can’t separate myself from that condition, and wouldn’t care to if I could. I don’t want to see myself as something apart from everyone and everything else. If I’m lucky, I’ll rise as far as the condition allows, while it’s clear by this drawing I have already fathomed its depths. There’s a key element here: […]
The face on the right might be appropriate for a volume about ancient Rome; the one on the left looks almost as old, as if a monk long ago had seen it in a dream — or maybe the dreamer was drawn by another monk while he was asleep. Or maybe both were asleep. Either way, however it happened, I myself awoke from a dream this morning in which I […]
Having been friends with Glen doesn’t make me a hero. And yet it occurs to me now that, in the pieces I’ve written about him, it’s possible I’ve portrayed myself as such, as if my survival of his death from cancer at the age of eighteen, were somehow more important than what he suffered and the price he and his family ultimately paid. And, other than the fact that he […]
I have no idea what possessed me, just as I have no idea what possesses me now. Possessed, in the way a leaf or bubble is possessed by a slowly moving river, just before it reaches the falls. Three Drawings — I invite you to look at these. At the time they were first published, very few did, Poems, Notes, and Drawings then being only in its third installment. I […]
That so many of us are eager and willing to embrace ignorance is not a new thing. Willful ignorance is what gives power to the powerful; makes us vulnerable to injustices of every kind; and enslaves us in a narrow world of our own unwitting creation. That letting others do our thinking for us is easier, cannot be further from the truth; we need only look at the results. It […]
Well, I’ll put them somewhere. Then I’ll move about among them, admire them as I pass, and take them every now and then from their shelf or stack. I’ll read a few lines at random; I’ll marvel at how they’re made, and feel their weight in my hands. For now, though, they’re still on my desk. Melville, as it turns out, is rather perfumey — something I didn’t notice at […]
William Michaelian 