Zen Greeting
Let us know each other so well that each time we meet,we are glad to find we are someone else. May 1, 2021 . [ 1093 ]
Tag Archive for ‘Journals’
Passing by the Rhododendron
Dear crane fly / we have something in common / a long life in a short time April 29, 2021 . [ 1092 ]
Something Between Us
I scratch the surface. It laughs, and scratches back. . Something Between Us It’s natural that we probe the universe for signs of life, but remember: the universe itself is a living thing, and the seeming nothingness we call space is as vital to our existence as that which, to our perception, we find it contains. We may classify space as nothing, or call it emptiness, but it’s the medium […]
Breaking Through
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 […]
Galileo One Day, Jesus the Next
Philosophers, poets, thinkers, mystics — if we really understood them, would we quote them so often? Or would we instead relate our own direct experience, through our own actions and in our own words, or in whichever way is most natural, such as making bread, playing with children, and planting flowers? Truth is timeless. Realization is always fresh and new: it’s both perishable and everlasting. Still, quotes serve a purpose. […]
The First to Sneeze
A healthy body wants only what it needs. A healthy mind acts accordingly. The stars were still bright at four this morning. Even then I could hear robins singing up the street. No shoes or socks: I was listening with my feet. Red, purple, pink: three big barrels of geraniums, three plants in each. They join us at each meal. Being geraniums is an art: sometimes we are in the […]
Tragedies and Toy Soldiers
We are the bird, the cloud, the drifting insect. We are the waterfall. We are delicate bits of dandelion fluff. We are all of space, and all that space contains. And we contain that space: space enters and leaves our bodies with every breath. Space is not only out there, where the stars are. It is here, where Earth is, and where we are. And we — you, I, and […]
Every Bit a Dandelion
Bits and bits and odds and ends. I needn’t be, but I am. Sits and sits and nods and bends. As if is is was, and was is is. April 16, 2021 . Every Bit a Dandelion Now blissfully adrift, there is no question of weightlessness. Now working the laces on my worn out shoes, none of gravity. Now musing on the trials of the past, none of anxiety. Now […]
A Little Boy’s Epitaph
Here is the marble, and here is the hand that held it just so, and aimed. April 13, 2021 . [ 1075 ]
Dream Fragment, 3:45 a.m.
A little bit of coffee, a little bit of soap. Hand on the bell cord, eye on the rope. April 12, 2021 . Dream Fragment, 3:45 a.m. A young man, of sixteen or seventeen and a stranger to me, leads me to a table, atop which is a curious arrangement of small objects, seemingly of a scientific nature. “If I die,” he says quietly, and with the utmost reverence for […]
William Michaelian 