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 ‘Diaries’
Joy
Oh, the fall rains! Day and night, mushrooms sprout in tender grass, and crowd my little hut. And look! Here lie my bones! September 23, 2019 [ 520 ]
Fall Questions
Is it confidence, or arrogance? If we are honest with ourselves and with others, if we are doing our best at whatever our work happens to be at the moment, if we are grateful and attentive and enjoying the health that sacred, lucky combination brings, why would we also need to feel confident, as if we hold, or are seeking, some advantage? Is it because confidence is universally praised, and […]
All Ye Who Enter
In 1851, in a journal entry written in late-September, Thoreau writes in its own separate paragraph the following sentence: The poet writes the history of his body. This statement, or observation, occurs seemingly out of the blue, between references to the growth pattern of pine trees and the tendency of a certain kind of grass to burn slowly and steadily without flame. In Part 2 of Clarel, his 18,000-line poem […]
Hoh Rain Forest
Rain, in such volume, with such force, and the cedar, unperturbed, a solemn drinker at closing time — yes, what is wisdom worth in this leaky house of mine? September 18, 2019 Hoh Rain Forest July 20, 2010 One saw swans back then. Another, fingers, hands. I saw faces. I see them again. [ 515 ]
Good Fortune
A parsley leaf survived the wash. Soap, hot, cold. Spin, rinse, spin. Scent, fresh, green. As if these were little things. September 17, 2019 Good Fortune You say this morning you will write a mountain range; and then, when evening comes, a ladybug crawls across your blank white page. [ 514 ]
A Blossom to the Wind
Out walking early this morning in a strong southwest wind promising rain, I fell to thinking about my personal history, and how, one by one, so many of my tired habits and other forms of learned behavior have fallen away. It has gradually become clear, for instance, that to think, behave, and eat a certain way, simply because that was the way my father and grandfather thought, behaved, and ate, […]
The Ancients
The dream I was going to write this morning has evaporated. Last night, it was so vivid when I awoke that I was sure I would not forget it, especially since I stayed awake for several minutes afterward. Or was that interval of waking also part of the dream? Just as I finished writing the last sentence, I heard a cat screeching somewhere in the darkness. There — there it […]
Escape is a Cage
What is it that keeps me saying what I’ve already said? Self-love, perhaps? Indifference? Ignorance? Or is there simply a birdsong mechanism deep in my heart or throat, the purpose of which is to express a prehistoric loss or need? And yet, for the life of me, if I’ve lost something, I don’t know or remember what it is. And what could I, fortunate as I am to perceive such […]
Whispers
Dahlia leaves, intensely green after a thunderstorm. Ferns and moss, a fertile, humid prayer. Cleaning the iris bed — old, worn mothers with their fearless children. The scent of mushrooms soon to sprout. A friendly neighbor says a spirit haunts his house. Books — Walt Whitman and John Muir. Melville and Thoreau. And how strange Emerson, if he’d had a beard. September 12, 2019 [ 510 ]
William Michaelian 