Once upon a time, there was a little mirror. I think I’ll be a lake today, he said, and began to shimmer. A big white cloud floated overhead. What have we here? the cloud said, Looking at her reflection in the bright water, I’ve never seen anything so lovely. And all at once the lake became a mirror again. It made him feel helpless, and, truth be told, a little […]
I’d just gone to bed, and taken a slow deep breath, Whereupon, without a single thought, I, or someone, said, This is all a dream. Another breath — and, with an almost overwhelming sense of gratitude, I closed my eyes, and fell immediately to sleep. And so it is. ~ [ 2103 ]
Something I wish I’d learned during my growing up years, and that had been stressed above all at home and in school, is the importance not of proving myself as an individual, but of embracing and cultivating my natural talents in a spirit of contribution and cooperation. Instead, I was caught up in the cult of individuality, wherein I mistakenly equated self-worth with accomplishment on the dead-end terms of a […]
Of all the pleasures, of all the joyful sensations, of all that’s charged with balance and meaning, first and foremost is one’s own breath. All others radiate from this single, central, indispensable gift. When we forget this, and are in the habit of taking our breath for granted, we’re more likely to be hasty and fretful, and to fall out of step with life’s natural pace and rhythm. To notice […]
Shall we examine our illnesses, and give them truer, more meaningful names, such as The North Wind, The Reminder, and The Teacher? Then we might say, I am visited by The North Wind, or, I am thankful for The Reminder. We might say, I learned great things from The Teacher. I have The Mystery. I do not fear The End. We Might Say. December 29, 2021. Poems, Notes, and Drawings. […]
I can eat with gratitude and reverence, or I can thoughtlessly shovel it in. Either way, how I eat is how I live. If I eat thoughtlessly, my body will respond accordingly; we two will become coarse and crude, and be both cause and mirror of hunger and strife in the world. If I eat mindfully, and consume only what I need, the good food I eat will bring joy […]
I’ve just noticed for the first time that this true event reads like a dream — in fact, more like a dream than some of the dreams I’ve recorded. Now, what do you suppose that means? And what does it mean that the memory of the event also seems like a dream? Does it mean memory, in general, is a dream? When I say, No, this really happened, do I […]
It gives me a good feeling to revisit such a positive, personal, universal poem. Though it was written more than eight years ago and I am indisputably that much older, I still feel, in contemplating the thoughts and images called forth, that a beautiful harvest is in. And I still feel gratitude, and call it a blessing and a symphony. Whatever your age, if you have yet to explore the […]
Since I looked back then on the little I had done, I will look back now, twenty pages into Annotations and Elucidations. I feel the work is going well. Responding to each old page with a new page is a challenge I enjoy; that there are so many pages ahead of me, I might find daunting, were it not that I seem born to create such preposterous tasks for myself. […]
And Man probably reveals more about me than it does the human condition, though I can’t separate myself from that condition, and wouldn’t care to if I could. I don’t want to see myself as something apart from everyone and everything else. If I’m lucky, I’ll rise as far as the condition allows, while it’s clear by this drawing I have already fathomed its depths. There’s a key element here: […]
William Michaelian 
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