Author Archives

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

• Full moon over the swale

  By Bill Pearse on July 3, 2015 • ( 6 )

  Brad’s friend Jim reminds me of a scarecrow that’s missing the stuffing around his waist he’s so thin, it makes his pants ride low, that’s the first thing you notice. The kids have gorged themselves on cheese puffs like the… Read More ›

• A new path to the Lantern Tree

  By Bill Pearse on July 2, 2015 • ( 10 )

  

  I’m driving my kids into the deserts of eastern Washington where it’s near wildfire season with no appreciable rain in 30 days, and we stop at a Texaco near the town Vantage, and I think surely that smoke in the… Read More ›

• Stuck inside a hummingbird mobile with the Memphis blues again

  By Bill Pearse on June 29, 2015 • ( 4 )

  We drove around with five fluorescent lamp bulbs in the back of the Volvo and one of the two mufflers missing with the second one scraping the pavement and hanging there wrong like a bad organ, something that needs removed… Read More ›

• The man who caved in on himself

  By Bill Pearse on June 26, 2015 • ( 15 )

  Five years ago we hired our neighbor to renovate our bathroom — redo the shower, tile the bathtub. It took longer than it should when you try to get a good deal and at the end of it, he said… Read More ›

• Taking it straight out of the can

  By Bill Pearse on June 24, 2015 • ( 9 )

  We were so distracted we agreed to let Lily get her hair dyed purple and it cost $50 plus tip, and I wasn’t even there when she was picking out the color because I was on the cell phone trying to… Read More ›

• The root beer raised nipple dial

  By Bill Pearse on June 23, 2015 • ( 12 )

  Loren’s brother Alan is a philatelist and remarks on my root beer raised nipple (watch) which I didn’t know I had until Alan called it that. A philatelist collects stamps, and Alan works for an auction house in San Francisco… Read More ›

• The frail edge of belief

  By Bill Pearse on June 22, 2015 • ( 0 )

  They look back at themselves thinking they will see something more but never do, they are still the same. We are the modern harvesters picking turds out of the grass, bits of glass that could be made into something, some day. Who… Read More ›

• What your voice sounds like in a box

  By Bill Pearse on June 19, 2015 • ( 9 )

  I found myself getting wistful about leaving our house, started pacing around the outside of it looking in, noticing the roses on the side for the first time and how they looked like faces imploring don’t go — even my… Read More ›

• Assisted Living

  By Bill Pearse on June 18, 2015 • ( 7 )

  The lake level has gone down now and there are kayakers and fishermen out early — the same lake I came to with my dog in the winter months with my German tapes on an iPod shuffle and my notepad,… Read More ›

• Zen fortune cookie prize

  By Bill Pearse on June 17, 2015 • ( 3 )

  The man hatched out of nothing and spent his whole life trying to lose it so he could return to a place he didn’t remember but thought might still be there if he believed it was.