Jacque's Toast

Sunrise on the Water Well I am a week in, and I have been out of the city just one time. I have plans to be out of the city tomorrow, and this upcoming weekend, but overall things have been relatively mellow. This is how I expected it to be, after crazy amounts of traveling all over this past semester, and the seemingly endless streams of buses, planes and trains I felt like I would need a little rest. And it is great, but I also feel a slight twinge that I should be doing more things with my wide open amounts of time. The sunset from the window over the hills is beautiful every night, but the sun rises and sets no matter where you are. Sunset in the Sky

״כל עוד יום רודף לו יום ולילה לילה״      עידן רייכל

Rise. Go forth and follow your eyes. Be the roots liberator; turn upside down, so your leaves will fall to the sky. Slip out of your shoes and dream a dream. Rise up, follow the air, breathe deeply and breathe out, knead yourself like dough and roll yourself out. Then go out and rise up, follow the beckon of the sun, the call of the stars. You’re not fit for this place, on this planet your soul will waste. Follow the upward falling leaves, waft the breeze.     Rise up- and take your leave.   A Sapphiric Jerusalem Sunset Followed by a Slivering Moon

Ireland, my moody but trusty companion, the trip is up. And all I have to say is not too bad. These moments here in this beautiful country now reside squarely in the past, but that does not mean they have dulled in my memory, or that they cannot continue to be celebrated! I wrote this poem one day after a stunning walk home from class, and these words perfectly describe where I am at this current time and place, as I spend my few last hours in Galway. A slow mournful silent goodbye indeed; but though one trip may be ending, my journey is simply just beginning. Music in my ears washes away my fears. I jig down the street, bobbing to the beat. The rain swashes down, with intermittent ferocity, aiming to drown with an unbelievable velocity. Other times it washes, gently from the sky, waving a slow, mournful silent goodbye. This all just feels so miraculously surreal, with the music on loud and the movie on its reel.   My pace increases, the rain darkens the creases, on m...

It’s a struggle to know where to turn. How do I know exactly how many people there are to mourn? On a seemingly innocuous, rainy gray day, Chanukah just arriving, a happy time, yay! Nay, for my eyes caught something on the screen, something I’d just as soon not have seen. Almost one hundred and fifty dead, almost all kids. The world is on a perennial skid. death every day, despite god’s forbid. Speeding toward a foreseeable abyss, with no future for compassion or kindness. People are slaughtered, their killers martyred. It’s a struggle to know where to turn. How I yearn for days to be quiet, to settle down with my books, and quietly learn. But its loud outside, its loud in the world. And the noises and sounds are becoming all swirled, they are turning into one cacophonous shriek, getting louder and louder and louder and louder! Until the scream blows up, and all that’s left is the powder. It’s a struggle to know where to turn. I work all day, and do everything just t...

Road sign near Klamath, California - Photo: Jacques Miller Today I finished reading a book I purchased in Amsterdam called Lonesome Traveler . It took me an oddly long time to finish it, but the second half went a lot faster than the first. It made me go on a walk afterward, and I wrote a bit. This is an excerpt from that writing: And so I returned to the land, and made my way to the lights. My fight is not abandoned, for I won. Just as the sun peeked and peaked, and then submissively but not unconsciously dipped behind the more powerful gray clouds, so too I win battles and return home, to brighten my glow, becoming only more ready for the ultimate show.   Below are some of my favorite passages in Lonesome Traveler : Kerouac quoting poet friend Gregory Corso: "Standing on the street corner waiting for no one is Power” (p. 97) Solitary Man in Albany, California - Photo: Jacques Miller Gallery in Galway, Ireland - Photo: Jacques Miller ...

Top Prize in WANDER - Study Abroad Magazine

Today I noticed it is nice here too. Back home after a week and a half of traveling through Europe, I ran out to the bay this morning. The bright sun slightly warming the otherwise crisp day, I took in the city around me more than I have been the last month or so. This place has canals, narrow winding alleys, cool looking houses, green grasses, old buildings, large cathedrals -- it is also a European treasure.  River Corrib Then later we played ultimate, and it was calm there.  I feel very removed from the hostility and anger gripping the United States at this moment, and I cannot quite pinpoint if I feel great about that, or if I am frustrated. But it is nice here. View of the NUIG Quadrangle from the Presidents Lawn

What does it mean when you have nothing to write? What does it say about your creativity, your critical insight? Have you embraced the utter dullness that persists? Seemingly pressing in on all sides, squeezing it insists that you give in to banality and embrace the lacking reality. The reality that has sapped your energy and thieved the ability to pen wondrous writings, stolen the craft of creation leaving behind a messied palate of lackadaisical imitation. The wheels are rusty and won’t respond to grease, sluggishly turning eventually they cease. Wallow in stagnation and forget the meaning of inspiration. Some memory deep down continues to yearn for the sparking freshness, the creative burn, but the desirous fire has seemingly expired. Trite flooding has melted the wires, and now you just sit tight twiddling away, hemming and hawing, with nothing to write.

Looking at Helsingborg, Sweden from Helsingor, Denmark A brilliant and vivid image adorning a wall in Christianshavn in Denmark

  “The winds come to me from the fields of sleep,                   and all the earth is gay;                          Land and sea Give themselves up to jollity”       -William Wordsworth, excerpt from Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood  Photo by Jacques Miller: Marin and the Pacific Ocean