Author Archives

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

• A mouthful of slurry: on faking it

  By Bill Pearse on November 6, 2013 • ( 15 )

  Fake It Till You Make It. That’s the best advice I got out of college, and it came from a guy selling knock-off perfume. He put an ad in the paper that got me to show up, along with a… Read More ›

• Among the Leaves | Weekly Writing Challenge

  By Bill Pearse on November 5, 2013 • ( 4 )

  Maybe it’s just because it’s that time of year, but this song made me cry last November when I read the lyrics. Red House Painters, Desertshore, Sun Kil Moon, it’s all Mark Kozelek, and I love to get sad with… Read More ›

• Caught between the slide alder and Charybdis

  By Bill Pearse on November 4, 2013 • ( 6 )

  

  Brad over-estimated my climbing abilities and I didn’t know enough to know I had, too. We got the idea to climb a couple peaks in the Olympic mountains in early November, which is hard because you have about half the… Read More ›

• Shadow imprint of a soul: what’s timeless

  By Bill Pearse on November 3, 2013 • ( 0 )

  

  Souls make snow-angels in the dog bed, where Ginger curls up by the fire. And after she’s gone, the mind still sees after-images of her there and has to check itself, for time: For what time we’re in, now? How it… Read More ›

• Dream about a boy who turned to stone: online loneliness

  By Bill Pearse on November 2, 2013 • ( 10 )

  We go to our corners, the family. There’s the TV and the kitchen for the genders to split, devices for the teenagers to keep them docile, interested, present. Life spins in a prism of thoughts and distractions, frames. Most you… Read More ›

• The thing about the dead is they’re not

  By Bill Pearse on October 31, 2013 • ( 3 )

  Today I’m rebroadcasting a post from when we lived in Germany four years ago, on the theme of death and my step-dad’s passing, five years ago today. Enjoy the holiday, and may the spirits be with you. Famous Last Words

• Magic and Loss

  By Bill Pearse on October 30, 2013 • ( 4 )

  

  I got stuck the last two days trying to write about Lou Reed, but it was me, not Lou Reed, that got in the way. Lou Reed doesn’t really have anything to do with it. He came up on Shuffle… Read More ›

• Far From Home (Positively 5th Street)

  By Bill Pearse on October 26, 2013 • ( 10 )

  

  The last time I went, they tore it down so it made me wonder if it was ever even there: that brick building by the art museum where I paid my first rent, on 5th and Hamilton street, Allentown, PA…. Read More ›

• Goodbye to the guy in the van

  By Bill Pearse on October 24, 2013 • ( 14 )

  For the past couple years, I’ve been tracking a homeless guy who lived out of a van on the alley by my work, the Starbucks corporate office. I got to know his name, made small talk, met his son, shared… Read More ›

• “Trapped in the amber of this moment”

  By Bill Pearse on October 23, 2013 • ( 9 )

  I finished the Harry Potter series on Saturday, and felt the loss at the end of the story, no more. I got cranky and unmotivated, hard to be around. I started getting obsessed with death themes. I had a dream… Read More ›