Moonlight, streetlight, starlight. I saw the skunk again, just as I was starting my run. With its tail held high, it was crossing the street from the yard of one neighbor to that of another. When I was done, I met it again coming down the driveway of the house just west of ours. This time its tail was down. In no hurry at all, it crossed the street again. […]
I used to have a printer, and reams of paper on hand. Envelopes and postage stamps. Now I have a cricket in the rhododendron. I have the things I’ve said, and what I thought they meant. But only as I do or don’t remember them. A closet full of books I no longer need or wear. The coat that fit me when I had short beard and hair. Dust enough […]
In this house there are three thousand books. Early in the morning, I go out and read the cool, damp grass with my bare feet. When I come back inside, there are still three thousand books. There are fir needles, flower petals, a clover leaf. . [ 1510 ]
The movement of birds, leaves, and insects; the changing patterns of light and shade; clouds; a walker passing by; all accompanied by subtle changes in humidity and temperature — these are the things we miss when we stay indoors and focus for too long on books and screens. Not only do we miss them, we miss the naturally beneficial medicine of our physical engagement and response to random stimuli, our […]
Like April, and again like May, June has been a cool, cloudy, rainy month — much more so than what is considered normal, but of course normal is nothing but an average of the dry years and the wet years taken together. Last June, for a stretch of several days, we had to cover our cucumbers and dahlias with sheets to protect them from record high temperatures, which registered, at […]
Yesterday morning I ran four miles, and when I was done I felt I could have easily run farther. It had rained again during the night and the atmosphere was heavy and moist, with a light fog. I kept a slow pace, free and easy. This morning I ran about a mile and a quarter in a very strong wind. My pace was still free and easy, but much faster. […]
A few words about my recently departed brother — a short, incomplete remembrance, if you will: Kirk was born November 22, 1946, on our parents’ third anniversary. He was named Kourken Haig, after our father’s mother’s youngest brother, Kourken, and after our father’s older brother, Haig, who was killed in the Second World War. Kirk didn’t begin talking until he was four — then, suddenly, he started in with what […]
Let’s leave behind a few clay pots and a worn out pair of sandals. As for dreams and thoughts, let’s keep them guessing. They will be anyway: Religion, music, poetry, science — cathedrals, symphonies, books — Fragments that represent, but never quite make, the whole. Our little daughter said it best with the very first word she spoke: Light. She was nine months old. And when she was seven, She […]
When I came in from running in the rain and wind, the house knew exactly where I’d been. Why didn’t you take me? it said. I looked around the room — the books, the desk, the paintings, the photographs, the antique odds and ends. You’re right, I said. It’s like a desert in here. Death Valley. And the walls closed in, with all their strange perfume. They held me close, […]
My reading has slowed to a crawl. I love it as much as ever, and possibly even more, but sitting and I are no longer the friends we once were. The body craves movement, and the more movement I give it, the more free and flexible it becomes. Still, there is James Baldwin. Thus far I’ve read over three hundred pages of his penetrating and insightful essays, and am near […]
William Michaelian 