Parallel worlds exist and interact with our world, physicists say. And the lucky old man reading smiles at the thought of his family. December 28, 2019 Everywhere and All I was stretched out on my back for a rest yesterday, when I thought, Very well, then, here I am, on a bed, in a room, in a house, on a planet circling a sun, in a solar system, in […]
We live in a house full of old furniture, old books, old photographs, old dishes, old pots and pans, and sundry heirloom antiques. Wouldn’t it be strange if we were to populate it with smart devices — a term itself meant to last no longer than what it was coined to sell? Isn’t it better to speak to each other and to ourselves than to an array of gadgets and […]
What of someone who is happy and joyful, but unable to communicate, while those around him assume he is miserable and sad? And what of those who are miserable and sad, who assume everyone else is? Early morning the day after Christmas — not one soul out to see the frosty rooftops. I saw, or think I saw, an eagle in the neighbor’s fir tree the other day. But it […]
Little Boy Blue It’s my pleasure and good fortune to work every day of the year — to set down a few words, to draw, or to otherwise tend to the bookish details of my elderly childhood. But the word work should fool no one; I use it only to distinguish from the rest of the play that constitutes my daily life. For I’m as silly and eager about […]
Are You Listening? There are times when the spirit-feeling is so powerful that physical boundaries — gravity, flesh, walls, even death — seem to melt and fade in its presence. And yet this feeling might well be physical itself. But why assume there is a difference at all? Would I do so if I were a giant sequoia, in nightly contact with the stars? Some will say man cannot […]
The symbol strikes me every time I see him — the homeless man with his hand out, under the light at the corner of Commercial and Division. December 22, 2019 Trade Policy If I have something you need and more of it than I can use; and if you have something I need and more of it than you can use; then let us simply give the excess to […]
The owl doesn’t ask who, it knows who — and tells. Late night, last night, streetlight, treetop, shadows — bells. Low tide, bedside, heart wide, eyes closed — knells. December 21, 2019 [ 611 ]
Just before waking this morning, I saw an old friend who died in 2010. We were in a used bookstore. I said, “Were you asleep?” And he said, “The truth is, I’ve been sleeping far too much lately.” Recently Banned Literature, January 5, 2013 Ten Years Whether they return in the flesh or as memory, old friends often have a ghostly, disorienting way about them — especially those who […]
For sidewalk, Walt Whitman liked to use the word trottoir. Offhand, I can think of no other nineteenth century American writer who did so — this, of course, based on my faulty memory and limited reading. Word choice aside, one thing I’m noticing this time through his Specimen Days, is that buildings and trains are every bit as alive to him as oaks and sparrows — indeed, in his poetic […]
Walking the downtown streets on a winter afternoon, every brick familiar, Smiling to myself at the sheer number of doors I’ve tried and shops I’ve entered, At each set of stairs leading up from the sidewalk to sundry offices and rooms, And at the strange wealth of memories that come unbidden, The nerves, the tension, the fear (all of it precious and love always near), The glory of press time, […]
William Michaelian 