William Michaelian

Poems, Notes, and Drawings

Tag Archive for ‘Imagination’

Gossip is Gossip

Let us not meet in the flesh; rather, let us love what we imagine all the more. Read The Rambler, Numb. 14. Saturday, May 5, 1750. Those whom the appearance of virtue, or the evidence of genius, have tempted to a nearer knowledge of the writer in whose performances they may be found, have indeed had frequent reason to repent their curiosity; the bubble that sparkled before them has become […]

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A Raft of Lemons

I awoke early this morning feeling it was time to start the day. Then I read the kitchen clock — 2:58. So I stretched out on the floor again and slept for what felt like a good solid hour. The clock read 3:31. Ten minutes later, I was out in the street for a run. . A raft of lemons adrift at sea. The funny way you look at me. […]

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The Garden and the Poem

I’ve lived long enough to know that whatever I try to do is weakened by the effort. Whatever I try to say, is rendered less clear. I’ve learned that even before I begin, the doing and saying is already being done for me, and that by keeping breath in this body, life is allowing me to take part in a process as playful as it is timeless and profound. Life […]

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Imagine That

With the morning light streaming in through the front window, it strikes me that if I can recognize and let go of even one dull-minded, habitual response a day, I’ll eventually become so vital and attentive that if anyone notices, they won’t know what they’re noticing, and yet they’ll be glad. It will be a revolution, quiet, flagless, and bloodless, with no leaders or followers, and nothing to cling to […]

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Live, Dance, Play

While out running yesterday morning before dawn, and then again an hour or so later while doing some bending, stretching, and breathing exercises, I thought about what I was really doing. I was, in some small degree, lessening the distance between the life I’m living and the life I would have lived as a primitive, wandering, foraging human whose activities were devoted almost entirely to survival, a life in which […]

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Curious and Beautiful

A curious thing, and to me a beautiful thing, is how all of this life, and yet none of it, seems real. For me it’s a vivid, personal fiction, a novel, a poem. The days are a series of pages, full of lines and paragraphs connected by a common thread, and that thread is the familiar idea of myself, which I’ve been creating and imagining from moment to moment since […]

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