These Later Years
Says my childhood sitting in the sun, what are these later years but a penny you found and couldn’t resist picking up? ~ [ 2130 ]
Tag Archive for ‘Childhood’
Sticks and Tarnished Gold Lace
I’m enjoying Melville’s Omoo, and am now about one hundred twenty-five pages in. More story-like than Typee, it’s worth reading for its sailing and sea vocabulary alone. And it’s certainly not without its descriptive humor, as shown in the opening of the twenty-eighth chapter: In a few moments, we were paraded in the frigate’s gangway; the first lieutenant — an elderly, yellow-faced officer, in an ill-cut coat and tarnished gold […]
Another Bandage
I’ve just noticed for the first time that this true event reads like a dream — in fact, more like a dream than some of the dreams I’ve recorded. Now, what do you suppose that means? And what does it mean that the memory of the event also seems like a dream? Does it mean memory, in general, is a dream? When I say, No, this really happened, do I […]
Clear Pools, Shallow Waters
Easy, comfortable, perhaps even comforting — there’s nothing provocative or challenging here, no trauma or turmoil, only the familiar voice of someone remembering, imagining, reliving episodes from his childhood and beyond. Writing for writing’s sake. Writing to find out what might surface that day, as one day follows another, and the nights with their twitches and dreams, while a vast amount remains out of reach — or seems to, because […]
Imaginative Reading
My reading life began early in childhood, with countless visits to our hometown library, the same library my mother frequented when she was growing up. I have no idea how many books I’ve read. I know others who have read more than I have, and who read more than I do, and who are better readers in terms of how much they can recall, and how well they can analyze […]
Another Ring
Upon returning to the short piece Dream Baby, I am pleased to see how recounting a simple dream, which was pleasant enough itself, leads to a passage of memory, which then transforms itself into a kind of poetic, universal love story. While I am the hairy old uncle and grandfather, I also embody the uncles and grandfather of my childhood, their whiskery familiarity and smell. In a sense, the dream […]
My Sunshine Hours
I still rise around four in the morning, and I still enjoy a sip before dawn. And the time itself is one of stillness, and solitude. It’s not a big cup, but the coffee is black and strong, the way I knew I’d love it even in my childhood, long before I’d tasted of the miraculous bean. The cedar is now large enough to walk under, instead of having to […]
A Spirited Boy
Long ago, in my fabled childhood, my piano teacher, Mrs. Crawford, told my mother one evening that I had perfect pitch. This was in my first year, when I used to sing with every note — not because it was expected of me, or that it was part of the lesson; the singing was a spontaneous result of everything that was going on — the sound, the feel of the […]
Not Even Sparrow
Childish notes — some things never change. And some things, are not things, at all. Summer in the vineyard, a small boy sitting under a vine, hidden by all the other vines. Thinking of it still, of the stillness, still that still, nigh sixty-eight years old, in full. One breath in all — one moment, one grand revelation, one sensation, of being. Alive, blue jeans to the ground, the same […]
Stones in Wells
The recently acquired collection of Shakespeare prints reminds me of the heavy old albums of 78 rpm records we have tucked away in one of our old cabinets, and which were around and still played on occasion during my childhood years. It also reminds me of many other things that used to be solid, substantial, and made to last, such as furniture and pots and pans. But ours is not […]
William Michaelian 