You’re free to join a political party, but remember, you’ll always pay for the punch. . We were enjoying a cool, quiet evening, our doors and windows open to a nice southwesterly breeze, when some neighbors upwind of us started smoking their supper in what must be one of those barrel-shaped contraptions that use chips or pellets or some such to “enhance” the flavor of whatever meat they’ve chosen to […]
Upon returning from her early-morning walk, she said, “A raccoon, as big as a small bear.” . Rushing water, fluid sand, where the stream meets the sea. For an instant, there are two of me. But to keep my balance as I cross, I must mind my feet. . Potted the coleus cuttings. . Read chapters twenty-eight and twenty-nine of Middlemarch. . . . It is an uneasy lot at […]
Fall. The honey thickens. Visited the beach at Neskowin. Sunny, a light breeze from the north, temperature around sixty degrees. No sand fleas. The tide was coming in, but it wasn’t so high that we couldn’t see that since our barefoot stroll there two years ago, the ghost forest has been mostly covered with sand. Only the top of one of the heavily barnacled stumps was visible. The western-most part […]
My body language — the way I walk, sit, and stand — would it be the same if I had no clothes? How much of my physical attitude and self-perception is in the clothing I wear? How much of my perception of others is in the clothing they wear? When we meet, do we meet each other, or do we meet each other’s clothes? We’re born naked, wearing a uniformly […]
War is never there, it’s always here. There’s no such thing as murder in the third person. Like you, I tried. Very hard. Too hard. Now I don’t try at all. But you need not believe any of it. You’re free to think that you and I are trying now. Corn on the cob is something we have only when it’s ripe locally in the fall. I usually slice it […]
Late strawberries — almost ripe — the squirrels get them before we do. A cloudy morning, no dew: raked and mowed the front and back grassy areas. Birch leaves. Fir cones. Pine needles. Mushrooms. Took a walk through the neighborhood, reversing the direction of this morning’s run. This time, down the hill. Saw a man swabbing some kind of sealant on the sidewalk and driveway he had replaced two or […]
I would describe most of my adult life as a great unlearning — a process moving gradually from prior conditioning and habit, through blindness, ignorance, intimation, denial, recognition, acceptance, and gratitude. Is the process done? Have I reached my destination? I don’t worry about it, or think in those terms. I’m simply amazed by my good fortune. I won’t even say that I know what I know. Do I? And […]
A warm, still night, with smoke enough to twitch the nose and rile the passages — but by four this morning, the atmosphere had lightened considerably, and the air was clear enough to go out for a run. At present, it feels like there’s more smoke inside the house than out. I saw no one save two cats, one black with a bell — a bell-black inky tinkler — one […]
The rise and fall. Doomed to fail are nations founded on the belief that people can take what they want, and sell what doesn’t belong to them. Likewise, individual lives. Throw it away. Out of sight, out of mind? Or, out of sight, out of our minds? Thoreau’s journal, February 19, 1854. Many college text-books which were a weariness and a stumbling-block when studied, I have since read a little […]
I awoke early this morning feeling it was time to start the day. Then I read the kitchen clock — 2:58. So I stretched out on the floor again and slept for what felt like a good solid hour. The clock read 3:31. Ten minutes later, I was out in the street for a run. . A raft of lemons adrift at sea. The funny way you look at me. […]
William Michaelian 
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