Author Archives

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

• First day of school in Germany, take 2

  By Bill Pearse on August 31, 2015 • ( 16 )

  

  Starting our year of homeschooling today was like a kick-off meeting for a big project: give them a little information, get them engaged, show them a plan, have them leave the room excited. Start and end on time. And as… Read More ›

• The importance of turning back

  By Bill Pearse on August 29, 2015 • ( 16 )

  

  In the first draft of my memoir, which I left behind in the States because it has a bad energy objects sometimes can, I began with a scene from 1993 that traces the start of my career to its source,… Read More ›

• Cooking French in southern Germany

  By Bill Pearse on August 28, 2015 • ( 16 )

  Competitive beer drinking season has started here in the south of Germany, or maybe never ended, and I celebrated today with a traditional Bavarian lederhosen purchase, made from real cow hide if we’re translating it right, and I look nothing… Read More ›

• What makes High Baroque high?

  By Bill Pearse on August 27, 2015 • ( 10 )

  Hi, Is a great way to start a corporate email to someone you’re pissed off at but don’t want to sound it. We sat outside with a glass of Riesling in the afternoon watching the people go by at a… Read More ›

• The Cryptogram post

  By Bill Pearse on August 27, 2015 • ( 9 )

  Wolf prepares the Käse Spaetzle by himself in the kitchen while his partner Bernd smokes handrolled cigarettes out by the barn, even though we insist he smoke where Eberhard does, in the dining area. Mom worries about their relationship, how… Read More ›

• The problem with the Internet is it never turns off

  By Bill Pearse on August 26, 2015 • ( 23 )

  I had to watch myself on Skype last night, which was hard. The beard’s gotten so long it gets in the way of my food, I get moustache hairs in my meat which feels barbaric — and unemployed now for… Read More ›

• The logic of the bells

  By Bill Pearse on August 25, 2015 • ( 24 )

  

  I turn like a rotisserie chicken every quarter hour in bed, with a window angled open toward the church up the street and the bells tolling every 15 minutes, and I wonder if they’re live bells or triggered by some… Read More ›

• The churchbells on Sunday

  By Bill Pearse on August 23, 2015 • ( 9 )

  I get behind two lesbians in the Italian market, this medieval town in Germany — the market, no bigger than an elevator car, a telephone booth, and I say to the guy behind the counter you can leave the cheese… Read More ›

• The skin beneath my chin has the feel of waterfowl

  By Bill Pearse on August 21, 2015 • ( 15 )

  Mom woke to hardened blood in her bedding about the size of a tea cup saucer and couldn’t find the source, asked if the cat menstruates but she can’t, we had those organs taken out, and it wasn’t the dog… Read More ›

• The someday, faraway passages

  By Bill Pearse on August 20, 2015 • ( 4 )

  

  The want to be, could be, should be is too hard to be and easier left for another day that’s faraway, unsaid. There is no day now, no deadlines or rules, no place to be but the blind insides of space, where… Read More ›