Sometimes I look into my old books as a dying man looks into the sunset and easily finds himself there. Other times, I turn their pages as might a man with dreams and plans with time and energy enough to realize them. A few moments ago, reading the introduction of a small hardcover published in 1893, a book I read in its entirety several years ago, I felt almost as […]
I still walk every day, but my whispers have died on the vine. This is a good thing, because it was almost immediately plain that they were leading nowhere and were better off left unuttered. Eleven entries in all, I’ll let them stand as a reminder: when there is nothing to say, say nothing. And, even when there is something to say, chances are that it should be left unsaid […]
Obsessive description of one’s experience A child’s first breath, unrecorded, unremembered Silence isn’t silence, only Silence is ~ [ 2119 ]
Fourteen weeks of daily early-morning running: suddenly it sounds ridiculous — about as ridiculous as publishing daily blog entries — as if I really have that much to say, or there’s that much that truly needs to be said, and which might not be better and more fully expressed by silence — or by walking across the street and shaking my neighbor’s hand for no special reason, other than the […]
Yes, I love writing without words — but I love your face even more. ~ [ 2106 ]
If you were to ask me what I really do, I wouldn’t know what to answer, except that it appears to be very little. I write decently, and say some decent things, but I’m probably at my best when I’m not writing, and even better when I’m not saying anything at all. Sometimes I think that if I were to remain silent long enough, the meaning of my lifetime of […]
So many ways of publishing — I would gladly step away from it all And be a bird singing from a treetop, or a wise man silent on the roof. ~ [ 2070 ]
Once upon a time, there was always something to say. Now, saying it seems a transgression against the silence we so desperately need. Silence can heal or cure anything; especially the silence of the grave. To write from that kind of silence, without breaking that silence; to make ourselves felt and known from Hamlet’s undiscovered country — is that not the only writing there is left for us to do? […]
If you lived nearby, I might let you borrow a book. Or, even better, you could stay and browse and read a while. You could sit or stand; you could kneel or crouch. You could wonder at the strange figure sitting at this desk. Is he real? That would be for you to decide, although I think the answer might vary from one moment to the next. Are you real? […]
I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers. — Kahlil Gibran, Sand and Foam. . Ideally we will hold no opinion, and therefore have none to defend. For what’s an opinion but one more way of living in, and clinging to, the past? We may believe nothing has changed since we arrived at the […]
William Michaelian 