Cheese when it’s starting to go off smells the way I remember the boys locker room smelled. Like feet and bodily gases, something chemical-like or blooming, something alive that shouldn’t be. I consumed things well past their shelf life as… Read More ›
So alright, the mid-morning nap. On a workday. I’m not trying to sound boastful about napping while I’m working from home, or being paid to work but napping, which feels actually foreign and not altogether good. But then the meta… Read More ›
First date with a girl, spring 1985. I’m 14, a freshman: she’s 16, a junior. An embarrassment to date an underclassmen but there you go. She’s in the band, but beautiful. Mom says you need a “good haircut” which means… Read More ›
For no obvious reason the cat paws at the framed painting on the wall of the den in the corner behind a tall bedraggled plant and beside a Tiffany lamp. They’ve now had to take down most framed pictures from… Read More ›
Back when I got high I sometimes wondered what it would be like to not get high when I was getting high. Like could the indescribable quality of this world be perceived otherwise? I never thought it could be and… Read More ›
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 ›
I’ve lived out here since ’96 and always had a good attitude about the rain, that it’s just November and December which are hard, that by the time you get to January you’re over the hump. Not true! It doesn’t… Read More ›
“Discreet Music” is the name of a Brian Eno album from 1975 and also a new blog series I’m running through January, prompted by a journal-writing theme I started in Germany over the holidays. It’s inspired by the David Sedaris… Read More ›
I broke up the beef with the back of a wooden spoon until it was no longer pink and spread it with the fat and spices and aromatics into a weave and stood there in my apron, regarded myself, got… Read More ›
How impossibly dark it gets here in the afternoons sometimes. I lay in the bath with the pork roast brining and thought about the father-daughter Valentine’s dance at the community center, the one coming up that Charlotte seems so excited… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 