I went back up the Himmelsleiter but took a different route. It was my first time here in January. After a moody walk in the Jack the Ripper fog the night before I was ready for a walk in the… Read More ›
Memoir
The days run away like wild horses over the hills
15 Jan 25 Another sleepless trap, tonight in my mom’s 15th-century house, below freezing outdoors and not much different in. She wasn’t joking about how cold it gets. There’s no heat to speak of that makes it to the bathrooms… Read More ›
LH 491 to Frankfurt
14 Jan 25 Of course it is impossible to fall asleep on a plane like this. My body, my life’s longest friend, is my greatest foe. Bent in on myself, folded askew, I feel everything. The ankle tendon, the lower… Read More ›
Before coffee got automated
Thirty years ago I joined Starbucks in Philadelphia as a manager-in-training, my fourth coffee shop job in four years. I’d work in downtown Philadelphia for a year, then transfer to a Starbucks on Mercer Island, near Seattle, the next summer…. Read More ›
The remember when
We would have rung in the new year in the Pennsylvania house, my third and last Christmas with Shana, the year mom and John gifted us airfare to Europe, my first time there. Like most rookie tourists we’d jam all… Read More ›
Coming of age, firsts and lasts
For years the days flowed from an endless tap, the morning waves at the bus stop goodbye, the evening kisses goodnight. The cycle of days spinning to weekends, holidays, to new seasons, the coming of age: a first crush, the… Read More ›
Things that I will keep
The narrative recounts a trip from Stratford to London, reflecting on themes of unemployment, nostalgia, and family experiences.
Source code and origin stories
Maybe it’s just the light but in that first picture of me I don’t look born as much as I do unearthed, the way dad’s holding me out like some product of an archaeological dig. Dad’s so young his beard… Read More ›
Songs in the attic
This morning the fog was so thick on the plateau it blurred all the trees but when I got up the road you could see the very edge of it, like where the fog officially began or ended in the… Read More ›
First night with LSD and the police
How can you just leave me standing alone in a world that’s so cold The night ended like all nights, with the dawn. But this was like no other, that first night in Erie, Pennsylvania. The rugby player Grundy drove… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 