Writing is one more way of living forever, like digging in the garden, making bread, and bathing a child. It’s a city lot, but if I walk the same narrow path through the yard to its every corner each and every day, my footsteps will form a scenic nature trail. Out, back, and around, in every direction and through all the seasons — who knows what I might see? We […]
I collect sentences as I collected sticks and feathers when I was a boy, and then I forget them when night-time comes. How much of pain can be attributed to its original cause, and how much to the fear it will grow worse, and maybe not end? If I’m still alive at suppertime, I think I’ll set the table with the yellow dishes my parents often used when I was […]
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 […]
Fifty-eight degrees. A light, steady rain. Smoke. A four o’clock run. I don’t care to be in a room full of noisy people. A room full of quiet people, I can appreciate and enjoy. People are at their best when they’re quiet. I can move about among them as I move about among rocks and trees, loving them softly, without needing, seeking, or expecting love in return. But I love […]
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. […]
If it had a name — but, thank goodness, it’s beyond all that. Epigraph, Chapter 14, Middlemarch: Follows here the strict receiptFor that sauce to dainty meat,Named Idleness, which many eatBy preference, and call it sweet:First watch for morsels, like a hound,Mix well with buffets, stir them roundWith good thick oil of flatteries,And fresh with mean self-lauding lies.Serve warm: the vessels you must chooseTo keep it in are dead men’s […]
Met with no traffic during this morning’s run through the neighborhood. Back in the house before four-thirty. A starry sky, with a bright, waning, super-blue moon. Air clean and free of wildfire smoke. Spanish. Read a page of Juan Valera’s Pepita Jiménez. Italian. Read a passage from a translation of Homer’s Iliad. How much of effort is really the reaffirmation of one’s ego-identity? Axe, muscle, gravity. But when I chop […]
When I grow up, I’ll be a responsible essayist. I’ll solve the world’s problems, one by one. Then I’ll invent new ones. I’ll also sell subscriptions. Until then, I’ll be an irresponsible poet and doodler. I’ll be a dooet and poetler. I’ll also sell inflictions. When everyone’s well, I’ll say they’re ill. And when they’re ill, I’ll say I welled them. I’ll have blog security. I’ll be avoided from miles […]
A full, ripe moon over the wetland. Someday, maybe I will write like that. . [ 1737 ]
William Michaelian 