Canvas 1,168 — One in the Afternoon
If it can be held, it can also be released. There have been other thoughts today. But I do not remember them. September 24, 2019 [ 521 ]
Tag Archive for ‘Consciousness’
Burning Candle
Lunch. I’d just fallen asleep on the floor in the back room when I heard a strange noise — the sound of a hanger, perhaps, falling for no reason from the wooden rod in the closet and banging against a bracket on the way down, or of a penny committing suicide by throwing itself into an old cider jar half full of its tragically expired brethren. Awake for the nonce, […]
When the Need to Sing Outweighs the Need to Say
I do not carry a notebook or a pen. If I write it down, what then? Best to leave it be, and let it pass through and over me. And even that is arrogant. As if I will be, a moment hence, what I thought I was, and who I think I am. Yet I write it now — a willful child, a fleeting man — a penance of the […]
The Circle Is Small
Do I see what I think I see and hear what I think I hear, or are these towhees my thoughts, suddenly taking form and substance? The friendly birds arrive from nowhere while I’m watering the geraniums. Just a few feet away, the male hops from the moss into the birdbath and starts splashing; the female sings from the birch above. And what of the geraniums themselves, and the moss, […]
You Think You Know Yourself
The assumption that it’s difficult is what makes it so. But then, so does any assumption at all. You Think You Know Yourself You think you know yourself — then comes a word, a phrase, a night, a moon, an oak in rust on a time-worn hill, leaves, twigs, and cloud-debris, horseless riders faceless until they swing right in front of you — did you dream them or did […]
The Chosen Ones
This world I see, feel, taste, touch, imagine, dream — is my consciousness. And so my early-morning walk, with its chimney smoke, irises, and crows, is my own private mirror. A quick glance, and I see what I think I see. But a deeper gaze reveals eternity, and thus the futility of all thoughts mercenary, by which to the loser goes the spoils. To hate someone is to hate myself. […]
Jung and Easily Freudened, Specimen 1
I used to have dreams about work not done. I was behind on the farm, I was late, the necessity and importance of the job had completely slipped my mind. An example: suddenly it was April or May, and I realized I had forgotten to prune ten whole acres of vines. Always, or almost always, the dreams culminated in a feeling of guilt and shame. It has been many years […]
Canvas 1,234
They arrived almost immediately after I had awakened
from a surprisingly deep after-lunch sleep.
Or maybe they were already here,
and I am the one who arrived.
Or it might be all of us were away,
and fate arranged our simultaneous return.
March 31, 2019
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Canvas 1,234 — Sleep Notes
I Find the Stone
Does a stone in a river resist the current? Or does it let the water wash over and around it and work its will? And when there is drought and the bed is dry, does the stone hide from the scorching sun? Now, if you say a stone simply sits there and that it has no consciousness and therefore no awareness or choice, does that change anything? Does your statement […]
Eyes and Mirrors
It’s easy enough to see ourselves in other members of the animal kingdom, especially those with eyes most like our own, those deep pools of joy and sorrow and all else, as found in the neighbor’s dog or on the hill in a thoughtful cow. All are mirrors, all profound. And why not too the wriggling worm, the thorny bush, the rugged stone? Are they not in turn each eyes […]
William Michaelian 