The Green Study issued a writing challenge this week, to blog about the worst job you ever had. This is my warm-up. The problem is, for any bad job I’ve had, I got something good out of it. I got… Read More ›
Memoir
Invocation
I gave up looking for Emmett’s body and made my way back up the hillside, to the house. The dog had escaped the Invisible Fence, through the snow, without a trace of his footprints, just vanished. It was January, 1998:… Read More ›
Getting out of the labyrinth: Trying to finish Portrait so I can get on with my life
I thought it would be a good idea to do this again, to read James Joyces’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. But instead, I’ve gotten wrapped around the axle with the author, his conflicts with the… Read More ›
Can you be interesting every day?
I can’t be anything every day, let alone interesting. But it’s a good challenge: can I devote 15 minutes a day to record something interesting about my life? Is there something worth sharing, every day? I came to this after… Read More ›
Earthquake
A guy shouted at us, Get away from the building! My boss was pale white and crying, all the blood drawn out of her face. Doris, my colleague, looked like she was 10 years old, as if the fear of… Read More ›
Six Arms
My first bar in Seattle was Six Arms. Glen was a skinny guy who worked there and drove a silver 280-Z. He was sick with HIV, and they had a jar to collect donations for his treatments, but he died… Read More ›
Buckets of Rain
I got into Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks in high school while riding in the back of Mark’s Mustang, on the way to New Hope, Pennsylvania. The car was fast, and we hugged the twists and turns along the Delaware… Read More ›
Sentiment, sediment, and what’s at the bottom of it
Alright, so I am sentimental about people, places and things. I keep old notes in my coats, a mish-mash of crap in my sock drawer, and I’ve been known to haunt dead-end streets where I necked with a girl. I… Read More ›
On Memoirs, Getting Lost in the Labyrinth
I’ve gone back to A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man for inspiration, this year. As I suffer through the exfoliation phase of writing and the need to purge my life through memoirs, I hope it will lead… Read More ›
Cave
I bought a collection by Rilke at Darvill’s bookstore on Orcas Island, hoping it would free me from a year without writing. The store is small, warm, and jam-packed with books. A chime goes off when the door opens, and… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 