It was a strange night. Lily dressed up like Audrey Hepburn, with the gloves and the dress and the pearls, a cigarette holder, and Dawn put her hair up in a bun—and while I was at work I realized she’d be walking home dressed up like that if I didn’t get her so I left and hurried through my lunch and texted her, but she said she’d be walking with a friend, so I kept on working when they got home and then it was time to go trick-or-treating but we were trying to get this web site up for a meeting in Amsterdam and I was bent from all the focused time getting into work-pace again, and after I dropped her at her friend’s house the site went live so I went in the garage for something interesting to drink, found a .750ml Farmhouse ale Mike gave me from Oregon that was kind of old looking, and when I cracked it it shot all over the kitchen, the windows and the floor, the Irish handmade sweater I was wearing I had to wash, and the gentle cycle doesn’t work on our machine now, it kind of stutters and groans—so I closed the door and got in the den and put on some Classical (there were three deer in the yard when I got home and they all looked at me with pink eyes), opened my phone and got an email from a poet I met named Dan, I asked him Why and How he writes poems, WHY: and he replied only the way a poet could, in multi-dimensional terms that made me squint, I knew I’d have to go back and read it again: and I got in the hot tub but the rain drops were distracting and cold (it rained +9 inches this month and 6 is normal): and I thought about Lily, last week watching her through the window on the swing set with her friends, she looks awkward now at playgrounds like she’s neither here nor there you can tell, and I don’t take pictures of them so much anymore, you just get tired of it, you tend to slip out of the wonder of things, no one has the energy for it all: and I made the mistake of checking the stats on my blog to see how many people visited and it made me wonder for a minute why I do it but I shook it off and flipped the calendar page to November, it said All Saint’s Day in the first square, with no X in it yet.
Bill Pearse 
Happy All Hallows Day to you, Bill.
Love your tales of Halloween, the trials of juggling family and home and mugging folk for sweets with poets and work and spilled beer.
And I know what you mean about your stats – it can be depressing, flinging your words out there and
Yep. That’s what it feels like some days – words falling into space. But what can we do? Gotta write, right? All the best 🙂
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That’s a well-placed break there
Thanks Lynn, you’re a tireless supporter (no tires)
Much better than delving into campaign coverage first-thing in the morning.
Best, Bill
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Ooh, let’s not going into the campaigning. Right old mess, eh?
Yes, no tires here 🙂
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You are one of the only bloggers I subscribe to where the email doesn’t say “click to read more”. I have mine set up the same way, though I guess it would boost stats to force a reader onto my site. (Stats don’t register those who read in email.) But then I keep reminding myself why make things harder when it’s nice that anyone reads at all. And I used to take so many more pictures, and better ones too. It’ll come back or something else will come along. I try not to feel sad because it ebbs and flows even if I can’t see beyond. I try to appreciate the mystery of it all, a feeble attempt to relinquish control and gain a little peace. That’s neat that your girl dressed as Audrey Hepburn.
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Yeah, I didn’t think about that, with the email click thing. Ah, so be it. I’m so grateful to have readers, you know (I know you know). I think the information-saturation and how busy and distracted people are just makes for a greater challenge to rise to, to try to earn people’s attention. It’s more precious than money (their time) somehow. Grateful for you Kristen, thanks. Can’t quite “go there” with my daughter gussying herself up like that, it’s weird.
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It depends on how ambitious we are, maybe, but slow and steady feels right. Any time I look for validation, I feel worse so I try not to look. The happy idiot. And one of my daughters was some sort of goth thing in makeup and the other a silly kangaroo, only the ages were reversed. It turns out my younger one is the one we’ll need to worry about, go figure.
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It’s the same with our younger one. We’re trying to hold the line now, age 9, establish some credible level of authority and respect, otherwise we’re screwed. We’re already screwed. I’ll stop now. Need to put together something for tomorrow.
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Love the run-on, headlong sprint of this. Feels like it must have felt to you, and I can almost smell that old beer on your sweater.
I still check my blog stats and I still wonder why I do it, but I still do it and the cycle continues. There must be something unquantifiable I get out of it …
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It’s a video game, the blog — become top scorer of Defender! That’s what you get, Top Score! Woo hoo!
Thanks though, glad you called it headlong and it felt the way I wrote it, that was my goal. And the beer came out of the wool, I think. The wool came out of the bushes, right back into the beer.
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… because it makes us, who read your posts feel a little less crazy? Yeah, selfish, I know.
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It’s my goal that my mania can feel accessible or at least make others feel better about theirs. Amen.
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And you captured the run-on of day-to-day being just right
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Thanks May…I was going for that, all in one go. The end of a long day, sigh.
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keep going my friend! You have always inspired and encouraged me when I have needed it! I agree with the person discussing stats etc and if you put in your post hit a button to continue etc etc… I do that once in awhile, but does it really matter in the long run. I find I have a certain audience and that may be all I ever have and you know that is ok by me. take care Bill your writer friend, Alesia
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Hey, that’s cool and yes, yes, yes on all that. We have a nice thing, and it goes both ways. Fun. Good friend, Alesia, good writer. — Bill
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And breathe!
Abby and her friends were dressed as doctors from “Grey’s Anatomy.” “So you’re doctors.” “Grey’s Anatomy, Dad.” “But doctors. Like, how will people tell you’re Grey’s Anatomy doctors and not just doctors?” “It just… sigh.. never mind.” Even when I’m right, I lose.
You’re a saint. No, *you* are. No, YOU are!
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That’s a good comment. I know, Lily was hopeful people would recognize her as Audrey and some actually did. She has a similar impish, pinched look to her. And that self-assurance thing, it’s quite nice to see. Hold that as long as you can, girl — forever, right?
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happy all saints day, and wow, how does the time pass like this? how is it that one day your child is teething on your arm and the next, she is audrey.
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You know it better than I. Happy All Saints’s, All Souls to you too. I need to put on a Van Morrison song now, it’s tradition. He kind of aged, I’ll say that. The booze.
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I loved this and once again can’t wait to read more!
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Woo hoo! Thank you thank you thank you! Bill
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There’s something so primal and urgent and dreamlike and real about stream of consciousness. I used to write those. Now I don’t. Hm. Thanks for reminding me.
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“Joyfuleating,” that’s good. Yes on all those descriptions, thanks for reading and saying so. It hits the right note sometimes. For now, mine is rest and repose, with my animals by the fire, they all look so peaceful they might be dead.
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Funny, nobody else has ever commented on that. Yes, the joyfuleating handle/email is from my food blogging days, although it still fits perfectly well now with my food eating and food cooking days. Mm, food. Rest and repose sounds lovely. Now that I live where it’s warm, I miss curling up by the fire with hot cocoa and cuddly animals and a fuzzy blanket. Enjoy. .
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