It’s gotten increasingly harder to take all-cold showers as the season’s worn on. But it never disappoints, that first moment of sensory shock. Scenes of women giving birth in the Baltic from some grainy film we watched when Dawn was… Read More ›
Diary
Writers, spiders, and why silence wins
It’s hard to argue with silence. It’s what takes over in elevators and locker rooms when we have nothing to say. It’s where I go if I can’t find what I’m looking for, if nothing comes out when I turn… Read More ›
A lather of voices
Riding the charter bus uptown from SODO to the Starbucks shareholders meeting, I lost myself in the din of small talk and made myself disappear. I thought of a young guy who used to work for me in a store,… Read More ›
The way is dark
We live in the country. Actually, we live in the suburbs but it’s a small patch that hasn’t been developed yet, so it feels like the country. The first morning of Daylight Savings Time I walked to the end of… Read More ›
Chicken crap for the soul
Dawn’s been egging me on to embrace my dark side: no more chicken soup for the soul crap, she said. At some point, you’re going to have to decide if you’re Mitch Albom or David Foster Wallace. When we bought… Read More ›
Man wrestles tree, loses
Two dying fruit trees in the front lawn. Both leaning over, pulling on the green tape, the support poles. Scratching the top of my back when I’m trying to cut the goddamned grass on the tractor. Tufts of moss on… Read More ›
Prism
First sunny morning in Seattle, all year. I rediscover our yard, the abandoned shed at the back of the property. Roof caved-in beneath fallen cottonwood, can’t get close enough to see what’s inside. I could take back all the blackberry… Read More ›
Nature, Stirring
The morning light cuts through the trees on the dew-wet grass. The pine boughs are dripping, the ground is stirring: the jerky motion of squirrels digging, leaving scraps. Dawn sees it first: it looks like a dog coming down the… Read More ›
Stranger Than Fiction
The guy who cuts my hair has been reading about Synchronicity, something I had only associated with the band The Police, until yesterday. In his example, a good friend of his has just passed away. He was visiting her in… Read More ›
Purpose
Charlotte loses her dollar from the tooth fairy, but it takes too long to look for it, and we give up. The woman outside the supermarket is selling newspapers for the homeless, and I buy one. She compliments Charlotte’s sweater,… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 