An abundance of energy and little urge to write. Four frosty sunrise hikes in five days: one nearby in lake-and-river country, where the waters are high and silence prevails; the others on rocky forest trails in the company of thundering, moss-misty falls. January 23, 2021 . [ 1002 ]
The new vaccines are not simply vaccines. They are an expression of collective fear, an environmental and moral crisis, a religion, a philosophy, an idea, a way of looking at and living in the world. As such, they are blind expedients; their value is temporary, questionable; their long-term effects unknown. Death is and will always be near. I would rather walk in the rain and stand in a waterfall. January […]
Maybe I should burn all of the others and keep this one. January 17, 2021 . Until We Meet What if we think of words as bells, each with a sound that’s just arrived from a great distance — across fields, down mountains, over graveyards, swept along alleys and streets, and of we who ring them as angels without names? Songs and Letters, September 24, 2008 . [ 998 ]
It’s a pity, in a way, that each of us can’t, during the most heightened moments of our righteous anger, suddenly find ourselves surrounded by our ancestors — not just to the extent of our easily accessible family tree, but all the way to the beginning. For surely, in genetic, genealogical terms, we are not who we think we are; we are far different and far more than the knowledge […]
In the latter pages of his Religio Medici, Sir Thomas Browne mentions in passing that in addition to several regional dialects, he knows six languages. He does not write so to impress; it strikes me more as an expression of his generous, liberal nature: he sees himself not as the center of the universe as it was then known and understood, but as a fortunate participant in everything it has […]
The day will come, if it hasn’t already, when my notes about living in this world will seem quaint, if not childish. I like to think that I assume nothing; that my observations are my own; but this is far from the truth. In terms of knowledge, I have inherited a working farm, the ground of which was well broken and planted before me. The great astronomers have given me […]
The sound of rain. The blessèd certainty of it — think as I will, believe as I will, act as I will, the rain will fall on my grave, and that is a blessing too: a blessing to the stone, should I have one, a blessing to the soft green grass that grows over me. And for an epitaph, these two words will do: Listening. Still. May they describe you. […]
The physical world is a library of symbols.I read like a hummingbird, a ghost, a troubadour. January 5, 2021 . [ 977 ]
before / after / the wind / no wind January 2, 2021 Canvas 503January 2, 2015 . [ 974 ]
Your face is calendar enough for me, the lines, the seasons — what need of dates, where light and touch and grace agree? January 1, 2021 . Snow Lessons To write with the breath, to draw without touching a thing. Are these not snow lessons, and the patient teachings of steam? You say, This pen. This page. These keys. How can I not touch them? And from deep inside comes […]
William Michaelian 
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