Although I’ve recorded and published many dreams, I have not written about sleep itself more than to say in passing that I slept poorly or I slept well, which is, really, a way of avoiding the subject. What a terrible night, I say, — and then move on to other things. Or, That’s the best I’ve slept in forty years, as if I could remember each and every night, and […]
The distance between our farm and the next town was about eight miles. There was a place by the railroad tracks there where we bought hundred-pound sacks of three-grain and chicken feed. Opening a new sack of either was like opening a can of coffee: it was impossible to inhale enough of the simple-complex aroma. But how long has it been since we had goats and chickens? Let’s see . […]
About two weeks and twenty entries in, I can pause here a moment and say that I like this new website. Not only has working on it been a positive, enjoyable experience right from the beginning, but to my eye, at least, the navigation and appearance are as simple as its purpose. I love that there are no visual distractions, and that there is plenty of breathing room for the […]
We parked in the lot near the immense black walnut tree. Its shade is dense this time of year, the moss on its massive trunk and lower branches still green. We’ve seen it in all seasons. We’ve seen it bare in winter, and in its golden profundity in fall. And it’s clear in its presence that wisdom isn’t something one seeks, because it is here. And only the mind is […]
Coffee on, I was reading near the open front window this morning at a little after four, when a robin started singing, either from the lush volunteer cedar near the walk, or from the roof, or from the tall juniper directly across from the window and behind the dahlias. I couldn’t quite tell, but its voice was so joyous and so loud, all I could do was stop and listen. […]
When clearing tight small areas of debris, I use our grandson’s miniature rake. When I walk, I notice that most other yards have no tight small areas, because the machines the owners use to maintain order have destroyed them, or otherwise dictated their absence. The standard result is one uniform yard, whereas, when I work outside, I see multiple yards, I see worlds within worlds, I see light and shade […]
Strawberries. Blueberries. Blackberries. Cherries. I could spend the next hour experimenting with the order of those four words, to see and hear which looks and sounds best with the color, flavor, and meaning they convey — or the next week, and the next, until berries and cherries give way to melons and peaches. And if I say it’s a listening thing, the falling of water on rocks and the crack […]
On the north side of the house, not far from the front door, we have a small shade garden that has come about almost entirely of its own accord. It began with the stump of an old bush, a dripping faucet, and a small sword fern under a nearby rhododendron. The fern, moreover, had long been ignored, a stunted, drought-worthy survivor. At the base of the stump is a small […]
For a good long stretch, I had been chipping away at Leopardi’s Zibaldone, a few lines here, a paragraph there, careful not to wrinkle the bible-thin pages. Since it is made to lie flat, I had been keeping the book open here on my mother’s desk. But the time came recently that I needed the space to accommodate more books: a complete six-volume set of Imaginary Conversations by Walter Savage […]
One thought I have for this quiet, spare new space is to share on occasion some of what I feel is my best work from Recently Banned Literature. To do that, I will need to sift through nearly 4,000 entries. Another thought is to do the same with my first website, I’m Telling You All I Know, which, when I took it offline in 2011, contained 1,200 pages. My primary […]
William Michaelian 