It’s rare anymore that I use the word my — my writing, my poems, my books, my furniture, my house, my friends, my wife, my love, my life, my time. Only when it’s necessary for the sake of clarity and meaning, or to properly assume responsibility, does the word seem justified — as in, This is my perception, or, This is my experience, or, This is my mess. Otherwise, the […]
This much I know: if we had a two- or three-story house, I would, with or without a stick-horse, be galloping up and down the stairs numerous times a day. As it is, having to stay inside due to the smoke, I take regular walks over the length and breadth of our dwelling for the exercise. It has become quite the meditation. In the mysterious atmosphere of family heirlooms and […]
I know someone who has a beautiful garden, with a barn, a path, many squirrels, and a broom. In the garden, she moves rocks around. And the rocks respond: they summon light and shade, night, rain, snow; and they hold each beyond the winking lives of them. I do the same with small smooth river stones. Today, near our jade plants, at the east end of the flowerbed by the […]
Piano Master, what of the keys that go untouched? For the sake of these, we must conceive of silence. Songs and Letters, February 16, 2007 Another Song I Know, Cosmopsis Books, 2007 Also appeared in Barbaric Yawp [ 560 ]
Leaves in the fall — and you still cling to the notion of perfection and flaw? October 17, 2019 [ 543 ]
If I let go of sorrow, and pain, should I not also be willing to let go of joy? For if I cling, do I not cling to everything? September 27, 2019. The last fine sliver of a waning moon. [ 524 ]
If it can be held, it can also be released. There have been other thoughts today. But I do not remember them. September 24, 2019 [ 521 ]
With practice, there comes trust and confidence in one’s own footing; a rocky path and its frequently changing grades is a joy and a meditation; there is no need to survive or prove or conquer; there is only the path, and there is not the path, but a kind of spirit-communion and spirit-passing; a presence, and not a presence. The same may be said of drawing and writing, or of […]
O dear one, it is not religion that saves us, or meditation, or philosophy, or work, or art, but love operating through these things, and our inevitable surrender to her benevolent force, if not in this life, then in the next, which is this very moment, of course. “It Is Not Religion” Recently Banned Literature, March 12, 2017 Splash Above a meadow of moss . . . a towhee […]
Asked if he practices the art of meditation, the old man smiled and said, I don’t know. If I think I am meditating, am I? Meditation It’s not a question of loss or gain, but of the neighbor’s healthy lettuce; how many veins and folds it must contain of all that’s best for us; just as the less there is to test in us, the more the rest of […]
William Michaelian 