Author Archives
Bill Pearse publishes memoir, travel journals, poetry and prose, and lives in the Pacific Northwest.
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A wish for the year 2017
You have a restaurant. The restaurant is born out of your desire to share your favorite recipes, create a place for people to feel a certain way. Whether or not you know it, you’ve got a brand. There are things… Read More ›
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Maps are approximations
Man sketches Earth: Earth bears us up, draws us down Man gives names to things, to own: “Elliot Bay.” “Mercer Island.” The land and the water meet where the people come, But the land needs no name.
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Picture from Chico, California early 80s
I ask my neighbor if he’s ever been to Chico. He met a girl from there who invited him to her mom’s, in Paradise. He took his shotgun since it was bird-hunting season, and drove his truck in the late… Read More ›
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Weekly Photo Challenge: Signs
Lily gets a call from the neighbor boy Danny, asking can she meet at the construction site? She’s sick, but perks up, flicks her hair, is halfway out the door once I catch up to her and say, “This is… Read More ›
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The record you made after you should have stopped making records
Driving across Maryland in the middle of the night, from a state campground back to our flat in Ocean City. The end of the summer, college graduation, months spent standing around with lagers and our guts hanging out, passing pipes,… Read More ›
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Song for summer
The morning is damp Constellation of birdsong Punctuation by frog, by crow The Earth bends on itself and we grab hold: our feet to the sky, hair to the ground, stomachs in our chest There is surf, seagulls, the sound… Read More ›
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Writing, building
Writers need to be editors but the reverse is not true. What you write won’t make it to a real editor unless you’ve edited it first. Toggling between writing and editing requires both parts of the brain: the mystical part,… Read More ›
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Scene From A Window Not Seen
Old man with curly hair, thick glasses, Mercedes. We play with the hood ornament on the Mercedes: it bends back, then stands up again. He watches us from the window. Wiffle ball in the courtyard, summer. He calls down to… Read More ›
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No Gift Should Go Unthanked
The book is on my chest face-down like a dead bird, a lowercase W, a child’s sketch. The picture of the author on the back, a UPC code only computers can read. A postage stamp I used as a bookmark… Read More ›
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Feeling real, really feeling
Life happens with or without you. When I struggle to write because the ideas don’t come, it’s how I’m seeing life that needs to change. In 1985, I got a job at the Allentown Fair. I worked inside a large… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 