The boil-in-bag wild salmon backcountry meal didn’t have a date on it and I assumed no shelf life to speak of, no lot code, I got it at least a year ago, possibly two, probably still safe to eat. It… Read More ›
musings
Lost in the Funhouse with Barth: on meta, Brecht, and what’s behind The Fourth Wall
With social media and technology what they are, metafiction has become more a part of our lives than ever: we’re constantly stepping outside the frame to capture ourselves in it, and our story of documenting our life story is as much a story as the story itself. But as we step outside the frame, we’re straddling two worlds and cease to exist fully in either — like tourists on an Alaskan whale-watching cruise with our cameras out trying to catch the breaching whales as proof we were there, we miss the reality just beyond our lens and I wonder, did we really see anything at all?
The trees could be characters if we only gave them names
A row of arborvitae intended to screen an unseemly RV strip at the edge of our property died; it was really the only thing we lost in the yard but it bothered Dawn to look at: there were seven, in… Read More ›
That one year in Europe
And just like that, it was over. Beth asked the kids if they wanted some eggs for breakfast with toast and jam and they did, and we made small talk, and I reminded them of the time, and they were… Read More ›
Canyon Road bookends
I unrolled the gravity-fed water filter bladder that still smelled like campfire from a year ago, collected a few liters of stream water and hung it from a tree by our camp while Brad finished a cigarette and started a… Read More ›
Sunday’s solemn features
We got back to our vitamins, raw almonds, coconut milk — shopping for the best price on gas, how the clouds cling to the hills on a Sunday morning, the treetops tucked in, gone back to sleep. Even though it’s… Read More ›
Perfect from now on
I got an email from Loren at work complaining about Gilles, the fact he kept walking around Loren and Christine’s apartment in just his bath towel, that it was bumming Christine out as Loren put it — and I pictured… Read More ›
The visual voicemail data fetching problem at the AT&T kiosk
I wore a T-shirt I bought in Vienna with a corruption of the Starbucks logo that said Austrian Beer instead, that turned the fins on the siren into bottle openers and replaced the face in the middle with a pilsener… Read More ›
‘Is it heaven or Las Vegas?’
On Mondays I’d play Miles Davis driving in to work, “Kind of Blue.” I liked the wordplay and the solemn start to the album that matched the start of the work week, and seemed to be saying you’re fucked, but… Read More ›
The heart lies somewhere I can’t reach
We woke this morning to wet snow on the cherry blossoms outside and on the roofs, people with umbrellas, the smell of someone burning something, probably the stone bake house up the road. Dawn got the kids up though I… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 