Every winter, I think about rearranging the more than three thousand books and two dozen bookshelves in this room. But other than minor changes — a stack here, a stack there — it ends up staying the way it is: familiar, visually pleasing, organized according to no specific plan other than a theme or author here and there, or a type of binding. If I’m counting correctly, I acquired forty-two […]
They’re called The Asylum Poems for good reason. And as you read through them — each is but a few lines in length — you might see what I see now, almost twenty years since: a familiar stranger pacing a small room, each step a door, closed behind his back. You might see it even if you don’t read them. You might see yourself, too, because, if you look long […]
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 […]
After reading On the Eighth Day, the question I ask myself is this: If my writing could be turned into loaves of bread, and be given to hungry people, would I embrace that miracle, or would I want to keep the writing as it is and let the people starve? In other words, would I cling to the fleeting image of myself as a writer, even at the expense of […]
If this is my calling, so be it. If it’s simply something I like or love to do, again, so be it. And yet, at the beginning of my Perspective statement, which was written a dozen or so years later, and has remained unchanged to this day, I say, Each word I write and line I draw is an artist’s statement — not because I am an artist, but because […]
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: […]
As noted then in these pages, my brother, Kirk, died two years ago today — an interval which seems much more like one expansive, all-encompassing breath. I see, meanwhile, that it’s been almost a month since I last wrote. During that time, I’ve felt neither the urge nor the need. And I don’t feel it now. What I do feel is the arrival of spring. Why, then, am I writing? […]
It’s a funny thing. I say I’m going to write letters, and I actually do write a few, then, soon enough, my letter-writing degenerates into postcards and poems. It’s been that kind of winter — that kind of life. You, there, cozy on your couch; you, hunched and bunched at your desk; you, with your laptop, tablet, and phone — don’t think I’m not mindful of my promise, or my […]
The long nights, the deep, dark days, the eerie, sublime chill, shadows hidden within shadows, naked limbs, moss in every crevice and seam — if I’m lucky enough to emerge come spring, how can I arrive unchanged? In the street of an early morning, I’m amazed by the relentless human roar, the gasping of brakes, the grinding of gears, the howling of wheels, and I think, What means Sanity if […]
My way is not the way. The way is your way. My way can never be your way. Your way can never be mine. I can follow your way. You can follow mine. Then we have no way. But all is not lost. For no way is the way to the way. . Read Bees and Their Keepers, by Lotte Möller, Pages 119-124. For the month of August: A Honey […]
William Michaelian 