A distinct sense, while walking early in the morning through air that speaks of approaching snow, that each breath is greeting and farewell, and that each step is less a passing by, and more a passing through — that all I feel and see is a kindly breeze to please old bones, but never clings to flesh on which they’re hung — a present hum, a distant moan, a first […]
After visiting the massive black walnut tree in the park by the river, we continued half a mile along the trail to murky and muddy Goose Lake, which is swollen now, to the point that we didn’t need to go see it, it came to see us. Despite its name, we have yet to see a goose there. But there were a great many ducks, gliding across the surface and […]
I love the droughts in writing, the minutes that seem like hours, the deserts and barren fields, the dust bowls, the great depressions, the jalopies abandoned by the road like these hobo wayward notes. I love raindrops that take years to fall and then land acres apart, if they land at all. I love the peace of a dry well, the coyote’s howl, free for the taking. Dream The […]
These entries, however poetic, abstract, direct, or imaginal they may be, also reflect my understanding of the science of the day. And that understanding, as extensive as it is, is really quite limited. It’s also full of comfortable assumptions, gaps, fictions, and inaccuracies. It is imaginal, abstract, direct, and poetic, like the interwoven fibers of a beloved old coat. Many years ago, my parents gave me a simple but beautiful […]
There’s an abiding sense that this work will occupy me for the rest of my life, and I can’t help but smile at the meaningful, meaningless, childish pleasure it brings. But there’s no urgency in knowing the process can be interrupted or ended at any moment. What could be more beautiful and natural than a man struck down mid-sentence in a state of dream and delight, or realizing his life […]
With November upon us, I thought I would point to November 2016: Poems and Passages, an entry I posted in Essays and Collections not long after launching this website. It was hardly noticed at the time, and I think that the few who did see it were probably put off by its overall length. But the individual entries it contains are quite brief, with the exception of one or two […]
A long, dry fall. Almost November, and we still have dahlias. Cool, smoky, misty mornings. Spiders asleep in their chosen colors. The other hand clapping. Want less, want not, want nothing at all. Dahlias Sunday evening after the flower show I dream of two dead uncles. Penny Thoughts and Photographs, September 1, 2009 [ 166 ]
Eventually I’ll run out of material worth saving. It might be a few weeks or months from now, a year or two or ten — I really don’t know. And the reason I don’t know is that I’m going about this project in such a random manner. I write as the spirit moves me, and when that spirit reminds me of something else I’ve written, I dig it up, and […]
This is one of 730 entries that make up the daily journal and massive doorstop, One Hand Clapping. Each entry was published the day it was written on my first website, I’m Telling You All I Know. In that online version, the book was divided into pages by month. Atop each page was the following statement: The purpose of this daily journal is to see if I can find a […]
Yesterday afternoon, I watched through the kitchen window as a spider tried to move into a web that was already occupied. The rude visitor was slightly larger, but the two looked almost identical and might well have been from the same spring hatch. There was a steady breeze. Sunlight shone on the web, highlighting flecks of autumn debris. Both spiders paused in their encounter when they were disturbed by the […]
William Michaelian 