The rain came back, so long since we’d seen it I went outside waiting, listening for it, trying not to draw parallels to my dry January: Dawn and I got a table at the steakhouse, a split of bubbly, and… Read More ›
identity
First time hearing Can with my percussionist friend, Loren
How many memories do you keep in a jar on that shelf? Here’s one from my 20s, driving across a bridge at night with the stereo up loud. Were we out of our minds high on the energy of our… Read More ›
Sunday’s flattened head
On the five-hour drive to Brad’s cabin I kept it cool in the car to stay awake, to keep my cold tolerance up. Driving across the state to the east, how it all flattens to farmlands and big skies, windmills,… Read More ›
The day I turned purple (2019)
After 10 days without drinking, the swelling in my lower gut finally went down. A balloon losing air. On Monday I was offered a new job, and on Friday I turned in my laptop and said goodbye. The January bugs… Read More ›
On Sundays and holidays
We spent the aftermath of Christmas on Whidbey island, a town called Langley, so idyllic they still have phone booths with free local calls, wild bunnies, signs in the shop windows promoting inclusion, views of the water, a bell to… Read More ›
It could nearly be like a picture print by Currier and Ives
I went back to a small box of memories from 1986, a cassette I bought and the Sony Walkman I played it on wearing a second-hand coat and buying my first pack of cigarettes, walking the hillsides and small neighborhoods… Read More ›
The corrections
No matter how much I worried I was growing apart from my kids (or vice versa), there was still time. I picked Charlotte up after work and asked where she wanted to go for dinner. We drove to Issaquah and… Read More ›
The same deep water as you
We went back to the old elementary school, Charlotte’s last year, for the annual Halloween bash. Dawn and I stood in the playground feeling tired and out of sorts, trying to make out the identities of kids running by as… Read More ›
‘Cuts you up’
Lily (who now goes by Lee) and I drove to the Teanaway river valley on the east side of the Cascades, stopping at a Safeway in the small town of Cle Elum for junk food. I didn’t bring the guts… Read More ›
Song from a shell
In the icy depths of sleep, in dreams, you held me when I was no one, just myself, a shell You held me at the edges where I could have been anyone, but wasn’t— and in sleep, in dreams, is… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 