Notes of an AlchemistPoems by Loren EiseleyIllustrated by Laszlo KubinyiNew York : Charles Scribner’s Sons (1972) Found in a local used bookstore, after what struck me as a dreary drive past pot stores, fast food joints, and numerous other businesses that have no reason for existing, other than to satisfy a society that prizes bad habits and unhealthy living; past men and women pushing shopping carts bearing all of their […]
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 […]
Measurement, time, comparison, definition — how quickly they fade when I step outside and face the rising sun with my eyes closed. Is reality real, is truth true, when I am suffused with a warm, yellow glow? . [ 1734 ]
What grew in me without my knowing, what crept stealthily into my burgeoning little boy’s identity and went unrecognized for years, was a keen sense of competition. The expectation, need, and desire to be the best was administered in tiny doses without their knowing by family, friends, acquaintances, and teachers. The best reader, the best speller, the best runner, the best at throwing or kicking a ball — the process […]
There’s no need to prove my worth. Life has already done so by bringing me here. Proof — according to whose set of rules? according to which belief or philosophy? compared with which saint, hero, or lunatic, widely or privately known? When I’m grateful — truly grateful — don’t I already give joy to the world? . [ 1630 ]
When once we see everything is a flower — from wayward child to walnut shell, changing sky to ancient, mottled hand — we understand that no measurement or value can express the shimmering grace of this world. Life is so fine and so rare, it cannot be fathomed by means of comparison, or appreciated on such narrow, limiting terms. Just as there is profound strength in the whole, the individual […]
William Michaelian 