Morning Call
When it’s time to rest, let your sleep be death. And if you wake, let surprise be your infinite gratitude. November 4, 2021 . [ 1278 ]
Tag Archive for ‘Life’
Resting on the Rim
Insects, resting on the rim of a wide blue flowerpot; a bird, eating them one by one; each is acting according to its need, until the need is no more. No greed, no poverty, no depleted resources; no waste, no alleys lined with overflowing garbage cans. Good fortune: in times of plenty, all are filled; when times are lean, all are lean. Gratitude: to be here now, in joy and […]
Life, Death, Fall
This morning I finished Edward O. Wilson’s Naturalist. After lunch I read in Emerson’s journal about the death of his little boy, Waldo. Two months ago, I ordered Library of America’s forthcoming two-volume edition, Molière: The Complete Richard Wilbur Translations. Today I removed the plants from the pots, barrels, and planters behind the house. I also cleared the gutters, which were full to the brim with birch leaves and fir […]
West to Goose Lake
We are made for this. We are made from this. We are this. West to Goose Lake October 28, 2021 . [ 1273 ]
In the Interim
If I had no knowledge of clocks and calendars, how old would I be? If there were no one to tell me, would I be any age at all? But I do know. And since I do, I ask myself how this knowledge has shaped me. Has it limited my understanding? Has it expanded it? Has it done neither, or both? Moreover, I did not seek this knowledge. Like so […]
Not Only Trees
Trees are not only trees: they pretend to be trees. They know I am used to seeing and thinking of them as trees, and are kind enough to act accordingly. At the same time, like me, they are what they are by virtue of a process that disperses and combines everything in the universe to arrive at something familiar, yet always original and new. And so now, in effect, it […]
No Thinker to Think, No Doer to Do
I try to learn something every day. The subjects vary from the natural environment, to diet, exercise, and health from ancient and modern perspectives, to human behavior and the mechanics of habit and addiction, to sleep, dreams, and memory, and to other things seemingly related or unrelated that suggest themselves along the way, and which seem to shed light on this existence. That this does little to allay my general […]
It Might Be a Stone
Blue elderberry — one fairly dense shrub about ten feet tall alongside the path above Goose Lake; another twice as high, several hundred feet farther on where the path and dry stream bed turn; a third, the smallest, but with a crop every bit as ample as the others, not far north. Mission Lake, below the old black cottonwood, green with algae, very shallow, dotted with softly illuminated shore birds, […]
Canvas 411 — Helpless
You — the dawning of the age and the greatmoral argument — disarmed by beauty — the turningof the page and the precious life you have spent. “Helpless”Recently Banned Literature, September 27, 2014 Canvas 411 August 3, 2014 . [ 1180 ]
Remember
Everything I eat, everything I wear, everything I use; everything that sustains me and makes my life easier and more comfortable; everything that educates me, everything that stimulates me intellectually and inspires me in the realm of art — these are all proof of how directly my life is related to others, and of how completely I depend on people almost all of whom I will never meet and know. […]
William Michaelian 
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