When I was in fifth grade, I learned to play the trumpet. It was easy. Each week, when the music teacher asked me to play the current lesson, I went through the lines without error. I didn’t practice. One or two times through at the beginning of the week was all I needed. When I was in sixth grade, it was the same. Finally, the time came for me and […]
The shedding birch catkins have attracted the bushtits. Brief as it was, theirs was a joyous visit this morning. Music by the pound. There must be at least forty pounds’ worth in the plastic tub — lesson books, sheet music, and various bound collections. I took out a few — a book of scales in my old piano teacher’s hand, complete with fingering; two books for new beginners; and books […]
A few words about my recently departed brother — a short, incomplete remembrance, if you will: Kirk was born November 22, 1946, on our parents’ third anniversary. He was named Kourken Haig, after our father’s mother’s youngest brother, Kourken, and after our father’s older brother, Haig, who was killed in the Second World War. Kirk didn’t begin talking until he was four — then, suddenly, he started in with what […]
Shall I spend what remains of my precious time merely agreeing or disagreeing with everyone I meet and with every piece of information that comes my way? Would this not keep me in a state of perpetual opinion, sure I am right, and therefore willfully blind? Or shall I work to remain open, and tremble and sway with life as it passes through me and around me, like the trees? […]
The metronome atop my piano teacher’s shiny black grand — naturally I thought of it as having a life of its own. September 6, 2021 . The Way You Look At Me Your little craft, on a boundless sea; the sea, itself, so small, as to be a leaf, or breath, between two stars, suspended, by the motion, in between; the motion, a song; the song, as vague as clear […]
A brightly marked thrush is trying hard to clean its beak against the firm mud at the edge of the frozen dahlia bed, stopping now and again to look up at me through the window, or when it is distracted by bits of food. I wonder how much soil it takes in along with the worms it consumes, and if it notices the varying tastes of clay and silt and […]
William Michaelian 