From Here to There

People these days are desperate for meaning — meaning that takes you beyond yourself and helps you answer the ultimate questions:

  • Where did I come from?
  • Where am I going?
  • How do I get there?

There is no shortage of answers on offer, but nearly all of them turn out to be the pre-packaged distillations of someone else’s experience.

The answers won’t ever be yours until you’ve discovered them for yourself — puzzled over them, sweated over them. Where to look? The clues are all around you — available to anybody. They don’t require any particular list of metaphysical assumptions to get yourself started.

My writing strives to show you the signposts that point to these clues. Sometimes I can even tell you what the clues look like. But I can only indicate where the path starts. You’ll have to take it from there.

About Michael Freiling

Mike was born in San Francisco and grew up there. His interest in poetry was first kindled in the mid-‘60’s, when Mike attended high school just a few blocks north of the then-burgeoning Haight Ashbury district, where he was able to attend in-person readings by several of the poets of that time, including Gary Snyder, Allen Ginsberg, and Lenore Kandel.

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Books by Michael Freiling

A New Translation of the Hyakunin Isshu
Senryū Poetry from the WWII Portland Assembly Center

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