In the evening, the lilac scent. When dry, the cones on the pine were open and appeared ready to fall. A little rain, though, and they have changed their minds. Now their upper halves are closed — not tightly, as when they are green, but enough to demonstrate their connection to the tree. While standing near the lilac behind the house this morning, I was visited by a little wren, […]
I record dreams as truthfully and faithfully as I can. In terms of accuracy, how successful I am varies from one attempt to the next, fiction and memory overlapping as they do. The form also varies. Some are set down in straightforward prose; others as poems; not a few are drawings and are rendered without words at all. There are even times when I do not realize I am recording […]
Es él distinguida por la vida imaginaria —
o, “Sin molinos de viento, su mundo no es más que un sombrero divertido.”
(Con disculpas á Cervantes)
Canvas 913 — May 30, 2017
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Quite often, later in the day, I’m apt to think of something I’d like to write about the following morning. In some cases, the urge is strong enough that I’m tempted to begin right away. But I rarely do. First, I’d rather wait and see if the following morning does come. If it does, and I’m blessed with that bit of good fortune, I make coffee and read Spanish for […]
Sometimes, if it’s read slowly enough and with love, even a poem that’s deeply flawed, such as this one, seems not so flawed after all. And when we think of people as poems, and approach them in the same way, it’s positively medicinal. One Sunday in October Just enough rain to sprout mushrooms, then wave upon wave of mold. Un cuervo, mi mente, un matorral. How a boy in […]
Up at three-thirty this morning, after reading Spanish for half an hour, I turned to some of the dreams I recorded in 2008 and 2009. Several of them involved my mother and deceased father and my childhood home, and in several others there appeared old school friends, as well as a friend I had at the time who died in 2010. So many strange, familiar situations, filled with longing, color, […]
The potted petunia bloomed itself silly, then we cut it back, and now it’s covered with fresh green growth and a wealth of new flowers. Purple, púrpura, velvet, terciopelo. One thing I notice about older hikers who walk with a stick, is how the stick is as much a companion as it is a physical aid. For me, metal walking poles, as useful as they apparently are, have no appeal. […]
At 4:55 this morning I finished the third volume of Los Hijos del Pueblo: Historia de una Familia de Proletarios a Través de Veinte Siglos, por Eugenio Sué. Only one more volume to go. The first contains 1,150 pages; the second, 912; the third, 1,070; the fourth, 962. I read ten pages every morning while having my first cup of coffee. Sometimes, later in the day, when it’s too hot […]
William Michaelian 