Author Archives
Bill Pearse publishes memoir, travel journals, poetry and prose, and lives in the Pacific Northwest.
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The night has a thousand eyes
The marine layer was back, and made for a moody start to our Sunday. I climbed the gravel road to the lake past the caterpillars and birdsong, a rustling in the grass and leaves. We all had to go back… Read More ›
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The Oxford comma
Dawn said there’s a cheaper treatment for lice, where you just put mayonnaise on your head and tie it off in a bag and then wait a couple hours, and they die from the oils. I learned about the Oxford… Read More ›
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‘Clockwise’
Around this time of day my eye starts to twitch and I have to hold it to make it stop. There’s the old wall clock in the living room that’s slow, needs help keeping up – then the clock in… Read More ›
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Lines (of longitude and latitude)
Though the tree is dead, it’s home to a lot of bugs, birds and bats, you can tell by the holes. It’s like the abandoned factory across the street from our apartment in Philadelphia that became home to the homeless,… Read More ›
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Wilhelm’s mausoleom
I stopped by the dry cleaners, then the car wash — vacuumed out the pollen, the cottonwood, pine needles and dandruff, the nail clippings and dirt, then gathered wood to make a fire later, shook off the spiders from the… Read More ›
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The god of only children
For some reason when I’m in Portland I feel like I can be more myself, maybe because no one knows me here. I wake and walk down César Chávez to the Starbucks in the cool, marine air. And remember the… Read More ›
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Tuesday, May 22 6:40 PM
I cleaned the drain traps, packed my lunch, said goodbye to the kids and left for work. When I got home I took my socks off and went outside barefoot, spilled my beer, had to go inside for another. The… Read More ›
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Gray of lake combined to sky, the same
Through the narrow path in the nearby park, a semi-circle that crowns my walk, the trees are leaning in and damp with dew. It’s late spring now, past peak, broken petals brought down by an overnight rain. I come to… Read More ›
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Video of last night’s dream sequence
The dream premise was that I could use my mind for special powers through my hands. It was a new power though, like learning to balance oneself on a bike. To practice, I concentrated hard, felt my jaw tighten, my… Read More ›
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One Saturday in May, with ’77 million paintings’ playing
The cottonwood started falling and now it feels like we’re in a snow globe that won’t stop. Charlotte and I went to the aquarium and looked at the octopus, its sheep eyes, the valves where the cheeks would be, opening… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 