Author Archives

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

• Brandenburg in F-ing Flat

  By Bill Pearse on November 11, 2014 • ( 22 )

  My boss and I have an 8 o’clock stand-up meeting every day. The stand-up is meant as a quick, informal check-in on your progress. What you got done yesterday, your priorities for today. The thought is if you’re standing, it shouldn’t… Read More ›

• Standing under the shoulders of giants

  By Bill Pearse on November 5, 2014 • ( 18 )

  A week spent with data, inside Excel: VLOOKUPS, pivot tables, four rewrites of a simple proposal drawn up for review by one guy, a 15 minute meeting. A five page deck with about 10 pages in the appendix. The appendix,… Read More ›

• Secretary’s Day

  By Bill Pearse on October 26, 2014 • ( 11 )

  I was sleeping with a girl from the Costume Department. They thought she was gay, they thought I was gay, and we played along with it — Ha, ha, “We’re gay!” They thought she was gay because she’d started going… Read More ›

• You can see why they thought they were spirits

  By Bill Pearse on October 25, 2014 • ( 4 )

  

  What started off clear became obscured by the cloud’s thickening brow. The night passed on to dawn, this time we contemplate the dead. And we pass down a darkened lane to the end, past the signs and arrows carved in the… Read More ›

• Leaves in a book

  By Bill Pearse on October 22, 2014 • ( 12 )

  The days end like that, the same way they begin, me on my side gripping a pillow, wondering what day it is. Walking the steps at work, up the parking lot floors: walls made out of cinder block, what it… Read More ›

• The true meaning of karma

  By Bill Pearse on October 20, 2014 • ( 6 )

  

  I nap while the beef simmers in the stove, thickening over the house, day sagging into night. There is coffee and beer and water in between to wash us out, to cleanse us, bobbing up and down upon days. I… Read More ›

• The Hypertext Transfer Protocal

  By Bill Pearse on October 18, 2014 • ( 10 )

  

  Earlier this week, I wrote about the novel White Noise and how some of its themes from 1985 apply today, with the unfolding of the Ebola epidemic. “The flow is constant,” Alfonse said. “Words, pictures, numbers, facts, graphs, statistics, specks,… Read More ›

• The Airborne Toxic Event

  By Bill Pearse on October 15, 2014 • ( 5 )

  

  To think we are nearing a precipice with regards to the media, Ebola, and public perception about the threat here in the States is mis-guided: the truth is, we are always on a precipice with the media, with panic down one… Read More ›

• Now anyone can talk to God on the Internet

  By Bill Pearse on October 14, 2014 • ( 8 )

  

    My wife and I sit in the dark in the morning listening to the radio, listening to a person who’s picking out the songs and talking about them, and she wonders how it’s possible this still exists, now that… Read More ›

• The Rubik’s Cube of Plot

  By Bill Pearse on October 11, 2014 • ( 8 )

  We are all emitting and absorbing information every day. Those who are not are dead or non-existent, or irrelevant. Their pictures will be found unmarked in shoeboxes, not rooted in anything, thrown out. In this selfie age, everything is spectacular,… Read More ›