Author Archives
Bill Pearse publishes memoir, travel journals, poetry and prose, and lives in the Pacific Northwest.
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Rattle my bones all over the stones
Saturday, all of us on damp streets swaddled against the wind coming off Dublin Bay, wandering northeast from our flat past large churches, intersections where the asphalt’s painted LOOK RIGHT, LOOK LEFT, and the people have complexions that remind me… Read More ›
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Don’t blame Belfast
Friday: I regarded my socks one last time before dropping them in the trash as if they were something special, some memory tied to them that was important but better left behind. Cut my hand on something packing up the car… Read More ›
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‘No hard shoulder’
Little things, like the fact they didn’t leave trash liners here at our flat in Belfast, or I need a different key for the back door to dump the coffee grounds in the ash bucket, or the fact my man… Read More ›
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Trying to get lost in Belfast by foot
Charlotte’s clothes (8) are mismatched the way they might be for the homeless, for function only, stained, holes, slanted — and I’m collecting plastic bags in my pockets for function too, to tie around my shoes as makeshift rubbers or… Read More ›
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Man has to be his own savior
LOCHINCH CASTLE, STRANRAER, SCT Cairnryan to Belfast ferry crossing 29th XI 2015 Full moon leaving Scotland, three nights in the chauffeur’s flat to get away from it all, to get away from everything else we’ve gotten away from. No Thanksgiving… Read More ›
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The story of the mason’s apprentice, portrait or landscape
Arrived in the dark last night at a castle near a port town on the southwest coast of Scotland, woke to the sound of an owl stirring by our window so close it sounded like it could be in the… Read More ›
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How it looks from the inside of an Edinburgh flat while reading
The owner comes in to take measurements of the sofa bed that’s broken, apologises, says he assumed we’d be out at the museums on a day like this or seeing the town but we’re not; we’ve come all this way… Read More ›
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Postcard from Holyrood Palace
The girls are burned out on castles, history, foreign languages and pizzas from Tesco, leek soup. I buy a box of corn flakes to tie us back home, we leave the house in search of lunch in Edinburgh, but the… Read More ›
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Last Wednesday in Edinburgh
Thursday. Full-on tears, sobbing, from the kids — our night-time ritual protracted to around 11. The onset of hormones with Lily, Charlotte tags along for good measure. I build our first fire of autumn, the top floor of our Edinburgh… Read More ›
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View northwest from the Cairn of Greatest Sorrow
Some bars I’ll walk into and just walk right out, pretending I’m looking for someone. The bar, “Lochavulgin” or some other name that gets stuck in your throat: I throw the door open right on cue to a Foreigner song: I… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 