Am I really as simple as Cool Water suggests? Can I find contentment in using our grandson’s little blue watering can? He’s fourteen now, and so was seven when this was written. He has since outgrown the watering can, but I haven’t. I still use it every chance I get, and find it as cheering and heartening as ever. He thinks I’m crazy; I like that, because it’s further proof […]
Blessed to forget the rest — why, I wonder, do so many of my phrases read like epitaphs? And these stock words and images: who can count the number of times I’ve written the word peach, joy, waterfall, or blessing? Surely this means something, as do multiple allusions to madness, which seem almost to signify some kind of code, or shortcut way of proclaiming I am one with the universe, […]
Upon returning from her early-morning walk, she said, “A raccoon, as big as a small bear.” . Rushing water, fluid sand, where the stream meets the sea. For an instant, there are two of me. But to keep my balance as I cross, I must mind my feet. . Potted the coleus cuttings. . Read chapters twenty-eight and twenty-nine of Middlemarch. . . . It is an uneasy lot at […]
The moon, hidden by a bright, sprawling cloud — an illuminated island, complete with inlets and shore, a drifting, conscious continent. Yesterday evening, and into the early morning hours, there was a very active thunderstorm. What was left of the day’s heat was quickly washed away, the air sweetened with rain mixed with small hail. The crickets became lightning bugs. At one point we heard laughter in the street; this […]
’t is a conscious winter, when the rain is bright and the stars go out . [ 1639 ]
Moment by moment, breath by breath, may I live consciously, not by habit or rote. And when I grow tired, may I still be inspired to forget the last thing I wrote. . [ 1602 ]
Every breath is a call to the joy of consciousness. If I’m afraid of that consciousness coming to an end, or try to think of ways I can hold onto it forever, the joy immediately slips away. Joy then becomes just one more word in a numbing, distracting intellectual exercise in which I’m both martyr and hero. When that happens, the moment simply goes on without me. It doesn’t matter […]
Perhaps the oldest language is the one spoken by the body to its conscious inhabitant. And all that is needed to understand it, is a willingness to listen. To habitually ignore or purposefully misconstrue what the body says causes an unnecessary battle that cannot be won. The body speaks only the truth, and cannot be fooled. Its memory, moreover, is perfect. And yet, at every turn, its kindness is revealed. […]
At lunch today we had our first apple of the season, a crisp, juicy representative of a variety called Smitten. It struck us both as the apple of a lifetime, the inspiring result of a rare combination of events forever and well beyond our control. Alive in a universe many billions of years old, conscious in bodies made of star-stuff — is it any wonder we are so easily and […]
Slow verse, dry stones, the river shows her age. Kind nurse, soft tones, her smile full of maple leaves. August 20, 2021 . Shall I Tell You of My Former Life? Shall I tell you of my former life? It happens in the strangest way, today, not yesterday, before tomorrow begins, and where my new life ends, over, and yet over, again. Like smoke, it rides the wind, and as […]
William Michaelian 