Author Archives

Bill Pearse publishes memoir, travel journals, poetry and prose, and lives in the Pacific Northwest.

• ‘Einmal ist keinmal’

  By Bill Pearse on April 7, 2016 • ( 21 )

  

  It’s like the Germans are all on some schedule here that we’re not getting. In February, everyone was pruning on the same day, stacking limbs in neat piles to dry and burn. Last week Dawn went to a bonfire where… Read More ›

• American tourists broken down outside of Prague

  By Bill Pearse on April 4, 2016 • ( 31 )

  

  We took the A6 again toward Nürnberg, only a few hours to the Czech border, but after stopping to buy a vignette and reset the navigator we realized the rear brakes were going, making a sound like bone on bone…. Read More ›

• Southern State Tapestry

  By Bill Pearse on March 30, 2016 • ( 15 )

  

  Dawn got back from two weeks in Italy with her mom, I returned from Amsterdam, our French friends came down with two of their kids, more French friends came and left theirs at home — and with Eberhard, Benny, and… Read More ›

• Just Like Billy Pilgrim’s Blues, Amsterdam

  By Bill Pearse on March 25, 2016 • ( 5 )

  

  I came unstuck in time again and reappeared 20 years later pawing the glass on some Argentinian steakhouse window in the Red Light district with a bull’s head in the window convinced I’d been there before. Two days in Amsterdam… Read More ›

• What we saw once in the future

  By Bill Pearse on March 12, 2016 • ( 17 )

  

  When mom wakes and sees Eberhard’s bed lamp is still on she goes downstairs and finds him at the table with a bunch of dead roots, a screwdriver and a bottle of Port that’s half empty or half full, depending… Read More ›

• Final thoughts during the flight safety video leaving Newark

  By Bill Pearse on March 9, 2016 • ( 26 )

  

  When my mom asked if I needed a pair of warmer socks for our walk (I’m 45) I reminded her this is the guy who’s slept on the side of glaciers and gotten up in the middle of the night… Read More ›

• The entertainment unto death

  By Bill Pearse on March 4, 2016 • ( 38 )

  

  I hadn’t gotten sick like that in seven years, with my head in a toilet, and it was the same toilet seven years ago, the last time at my mom’s in 2009, I had to ask Dawn if she could… Read More ›

• What happens in March stays in March

  By Bill Pearse on March 1, 2016 • ( 19 )

  

  I got into Eberhard’s cigarettes in the Schrank which he said I could help myself to but I didn’t for a variety of reasons until last night, after booking a flight to Newark to see my grandma, and talking with… Read More ›

• Open the pod bay doors, Hal

  By Bill Pearse on February 27, 2016 • ( 23 )

  

  The river’s too high, it brings no calm. It moves with the force of a mob squeezed down the streets, knows not where it goes just that it must, turns from brown to gray, slaps the sides, moves with the… Read More ›

• Snow song from a train heading north

  By Bill Pearse on February 23, 2016 • ( 16 )

  

  Sideways snow outside the window, all of us bundled with our gadgets, our books, our friends, the din of soft German going through tunnels, beneath bridges, the ivy, the vines, the limbs cut to the nub: I sit on the train and… Read More ›