Author Archives

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

• How the house felt after the kids left for summer camp

  By Bill Pearse on July 3, 2019 • ( 16 )

  

  Outside it was warm and the lupine stalks were bending down, some on their faces like mollusks gumming the ground but not making it very far, frozen mid-suck. The dog smelled bad, a telltale bad like she’d rubbed herself in… Read More ›

• Hero’s pose

  By Bill Pearse on June 23, 2019 • ( 8 )

  

  We waited and waited but it didn’t seem like the marine layer would ever burn off. Lily had a date with a boy we hadn’t met named Colin, and I texted her to come outside so we could talk. And… Read More ›

• The long descent through the quarry

  By Bill Pearse on June 21, 2019 • ( 15 )

  

  I got down on my hands and knees in the shower with a toothbrush and some baking soda paste. The web site said if the drain had a musty smell that was mold, but if it was more like a… Read More ›

• Fifty-fifty clown

  By Bill Pearse on June 15, 2019 • ( 2 )

  The crow’s wings are magician hands that flap and disappear through the swirl of animal souls and the gray marine layer of morning. The lake is gray too, ribbed by a breeze or by paddle boats, the same each day… Read More ›

• Broken clouds

  By Bill Pearse on June 5, 2019 • ( 11 )

  Charlotte starts therapy today at the same time as Lily, which means by late afternoon the three of us will each be talking to different counselors in separate rooms, with Dawn waiting in the lobby with her book. It’s afternoon… Read More ›

• Stopping to pay the toll on the road to self

  By Bill Pearse on June 4, 2019 • ( 15 )

  At times there seemed to be so much beauty I couldn’t convey it, and at other times it evaded me for weeks or for months, for what seemed like forever. I sensed a link between my seeing the beauty and… Read More ›

• Moss petting in Portland

  By Bill Pearse on May 26, 2019 • ( 11 )

  I went back to Portland, and it was the same as it always was. We got behind the quadriplegic at the neighborhood wine take out and the clerk put her bottles on the back of her buggy in a basket… Read More ›

• Hello and goodbye

  By Bill Pearse on May 16, 2019 • ( 18 )

  Everyone wanted to know how my hypnotherapy session went, including me. It took a while to relax because I’d hurried there from work and had to rub my eyes to make the GANTT charts go away. But when the meditation… Read More ›

• Plumbing

  By Bill Pearse on May 7, 2019 • ( 14 )

  Even though they had holes in them, I kept wearing the same socks. I walked the back yard in my socks when it wasn’t wet. Charlotte was up at the trampoline and I went back up to apologize for what… Read More ›

• That last Friday in April

  By Bill Pearse on April 26, 2019 • ( 0 )

  Dawn quit her job so she could spend more time with the kids, and that meant her office was up for grabs. Dawn’s office is kind of ideal, with good morning light flanked by book shelves, and a door that… Read More ›