Perhaps the oldest language is the one spoken by the body to its conscious inhabitant. And all that is needed to understand it, is a willingness to listen. To habitually ignore or purposefully misconstrue what the body says causes an unnecessary battle that cannot be won. The body speaks only the truth, and cannot be fooled. Its memory, moreover, is perfect. And yet, at every turn, its kindness is revealed. […]
Goose Lake. A dense fog, the cottonwoods dripping, the oaks, the cherries, the brambles, the berries. For the first time in a year we are able to walk to the water’s edge. This end of the lake is very shallow and full of decaying lilies, between which can be seen the mossy bottom just inches below. Quiet. Few birds are out, and none are chattering or calling from the immediate […]
We imagine each other. And in so doing, we assign each other characteristics, assumptions, and motives of our own. The love and hate we feel for each other, the inspiration and beauty, the pride, the boredom, the annoyance, the disappointment, the confusion, we really feel in and for ourselves — which we have also imagined. This is only a suggestion, offered as a possibility. I suggest and offer it to […]
Pen and claw — old friends scratching out their autobiographies. August 15, 2021 . You Are Here As intimate as you are with yourself as imagined by others, imagine imagining yourself as you are, when imagination itself imagines changing course — that is, imagine a river, imagining an ocean, imagining an imagined star — as intimate, as you imagine, you are. Somewhere, there is a familiar old coat on a […]
In terms of imagination, joy, and wonder, I am as much my childhood self as ever. I am a dreamer, and the world passes through me as a dream. That is my reality. There has been an accumulation of facts, of knowledge, yes — but as useful as some of these are, or seem to be, they are only superficial adornments. They are not mine; I lay no claim to […]
The days are about survival. A man out early, wishing not to be seen, peddles off with my zucchini in hand. It’s all for a good cause: to quiet his hunger. Shall I rush after him? Shall I pretend I can feed him with the hollow fruit of my imagination? Shall I explain to him that he has himself been imagined in these very lines? Or has he imagined me? […]
In the matter of a few hours, a trace of rain, just enough to dampen the surface of the soil, was enough to bring forth another wave of sunflower sprouts. Breaking through, they look like they’re leaping into the unknown, almost as if they’re parachuting skyward, and my up is their down. Is there anything I can imagine that isn’t rooted in my life experience, my observation, my reading, my […]
If this were framed, and hung in a quiet corner where it could be read each day, it might serve as a kind of household guardian spirit. It might serve even if it were not read. After all, poems have their ways. . Imagine Your Mind Imagine, your mind, wandering, until it imagines itself home, raindrops on a silver coach, clattering on stones, a sign nailed on with flowers, proprietor […]
It’s a peculiar thing, the urge, perhaps even the need, to make poems of private, personal experiences you know that others, too, have had. After a while, there gets to be an easy inevitability about the process, to the point that the occurrences of poem and experience often overlap and even seem reversed; sometimes it’s almost as if one is remembering the future, or that the past is about to […]
In addition to the Harlem Renaissance novels and Thoreau’s journal, I have begun reading the two-volume edition of Emerson’s journal published ten years ago by the Library of America. Reading Emerson’s words aloud, as I do Thoreau’s, is more than a daily exercise in tongue and skill; the vibrations in my chest and skull create a conversational, dreamlike, philosophical intimacy that makes me feel we are together in the same […]
William Michaelian 