My reading has slowed to a crawl. I love it as much as ever, and possibly even more, but sitting and I are no longer the friends we once were. The body craves movement, and the more movement I give it, the more free and flexible it becomes. Still, there is James Baldwin. Thus far I’ve read over three hundred pages of his penetrating and insightful essays, and am near […]
I dreamed all night of the perfect sentence, And then awakened to a perfect, wordless dawn. The vessel creaks. A wind is coming on. . [ 1360 ]
Yesterday evening, I thought of a good name for the next phase of writing: Sweet Sleep and Bare Feet. To me it sounds, seems, and feels like it means, or can come to mean, a great deal, very much like the moment one gives, or is given, a flower or smile. In that light, I have restored the social media capabilities that are part of this publishing platform. And now […]
If whatever I write, or draw, or make, or do, is to be fresh and new, and not simply more of the same, however pleasant and comfortable that same may seem, must I not make sure that I am myself fresh and new? Must I not be my own peaceful revolution, and free of my usual thought pattern, with all its familiar repetition and redundancy? Must I not be willing […]
So far as it pertains to collecting and preserving what I feel are the best of my old writings and drawings, the time has come — if it has not passed already — to lay this work to rest. As such, I have tried to make Poems, Notes, and Drawings cohesive and readable from beginning to end. In that regard, I think of it as a book; I also see […]
If you sit alone in a room long enough, and if you do so year after year until you’re so old or so young you don’t know what or who are where you are, you can rest assured of at least one thing: you’ve put in a good day’s work. . A Rose and Other Matters I’m tempted to move the book with the picture of André Malraux on the […]
The great naturalist, Edward O. Wilson, has died. But the world has not lost him, as the common phrase goes. He lives on his books, in his colleagues, and in the countless people he has influenced and taught. He lives on in the environment and ecosystems he helped and is still helping to save. It is not necessary to meet and know someone personally to benefit from his or her […]
Each pause a leaf where a comma once has been. Each leaf a pause and then the wind again. December 5, 2021 . [ 1309 ]
One last shovel-turning of the worm-full garden space and on into winter — accompanied by this thought: maybe the time has come to write less, and dig more. December 3, 2021 . [ 1308 ]
Everything I write is meant for an audience of one. I address no group, large or small, and I don’t spray my words scattershot with the idea that if I aim high enough, they’re sure to hit someone. No, I’m still the farm boy I’ve always been, with a homemade slingshot and the nearest clod. And if you happen to be the one I clobber, I apologize. In person, I’m […]
William Michaelian 