Having nothing to say, having no message to relate — such days are to be savored. What is sleep but the flowering of one’s life during the day? What is day but the flowering of one’s sleep? Or, to put it another way, we sleep what we sow. Cleaned the blinds on our seven tall south-facing windows, ahead of bringing in our houseplants for the winter. Read the eighth chapter […]
It’s not that nature answers all questions and problems, though it seems she does. It’s that she disposes of those not really worth asking or solving, and returns us, at least for a time, to a state of harmony with our most basic needs, and an understanding of how we’re connected to each other and all things. If you live in a city, even a single flower or plant near […]
Sky is my window, earth is my door. Come and be with me, come and be poor. Grass is my pillow, breeze is my song. Sit here beside me, until you move on. Sky is my window, earth is my door. Come and be with me, come and be poor. If you can love me, I’ll love you the more. And if you can love me, I’ll love you the […]
A robin is building a nest in the rhododendron just outside the window of the little bedroom at the end of the hall. I was on the floor stretched out on my back for an after-lunch rest when her movement caught my eye. If she follows through and all goes well, we’ll be able to watch as a new family of robins comes into being. The plant isn’t a dense […]
With the morning light streaming in through the front window, it strikes me that if I can recognize and let go of even one dull-minded, habitual response a day, I’ll eventually become so vital and attentive that if anyone notices, they won’t know what they’re noticing, and yet they’ll be glad. It will be a revolution, quiet, flagless, and bloodless, with no leaders or followers, and nothing to cling to […]
A falling star — a petal bright, from the flower. * Some books I leave open, so that during daylight hours, I can read a few lines from them in passing. Diaries, journals, letters, poetry, too — and it’s all poetry, beginning with the light coming in through the window. Or call it pollen, or honey, because the words coat the wings, and sweeten the tongue. * How many things […]
Not many days ago, and an equally uncertain number of nights, I read backward and aloud the last page of Samuel Beckett’s The Unnamable. Standing before our big front window, paced by the commas, I read the words slowly and with feeling. When I reached the top of the page, I wondered if the author might not have done the same thing himself. It’s possible he could even have written […]
Dragonfly season here is a show of grace; color; delicacy. The insects rise and pause and land with an ethereal weightlessness we don’t associate with the much larger dragonflies of our youth in California’s San Joaquin Valley, where they stood on air and rumbled about in our classrooms at school, entering and leaving freely through the open doors and unscreened windows. During the warm months, which seemed to last most […]
There’s a young robin building a nest on top of a light fixture under the eaves next to the little door that leads from the garage into the backyard. She worked at it Sunday for about eleven hours, having great difficulty at first due to the slippery metal, but by evening she’d managed to form what looked like a relatively secure base. Fluffy and determined, she resumed work yesterday morning […]
William Michaelian 