No one taught my father to swim. He jumped into the ditch and started paddling. A depression, a lifetime, a war, a family later, he climbed out of the water and waved from the bank on the other side. He waved and he waved, and faded to shade, in the flesh with the fish, a splash and a wish, a breeze, the sky, a door. And then we couldn’t see […]
Was I awake, or asleep? Was I there, or somewhere else? Banish the word or and the answer is clear: there need be no answer. That, in its own simple, strange way, is the story of my life. My grandfather, emerging from the sycamore shade on the south end of his house, barefoot and carrying a shotgun in one hand and the bloody remains of a robin in the other, […]
Yesterday afternoon I cleared the driveway of snow with one of the old manure shovels my father and grandfather used on the farm during the Great Depression and after the Second World War, and which we continued to use in later years, and which now reside, along with several other tools from that earlier time, in an old barrel in the little shed behind the house. While I was out, […]
In terms of imagination, joy, and wonder, I am as much my childhood self as ever. I am a dreamer, and the world passes through me as a dream. That is my reality. There has been an accumulation of facts, of knowledge, yes — but as useful as some of these are, or seem to be, they are only superficial adornments. They are not mine; I lay no claim to […]
One hundred thirteen degrees. Yesterday afternoon, in the grass behind the house, we set a little sprinkler for the birds. It made a shallow lake in the shade. And out they came from the bushes, and down from the trees, children of the leaves. The tomatoes and peppers did not mind the heat. We protected the cucumbers with a sheet. We will again today. At four this morning it was […]
Who knows why, but this morning I find myself thinking about jackrabbits, vineyards, and dust. These are but a few significant emblems of my childhood, which, rather than ending, gradually became the insanity I labor under today. Polliwogs, crawdads, slow-moving mossy water. The sound of our tractor in the distance, the tractor and my father pursued by a cloud of blackbirds looking for bugs, seeds, and worms. As I look […]
William Michaelian 