Dawn’s cell phone alarm goes off in bed but she lies there listening to the rain thinking about work and I lie there doing the same, thinking about acquiring some. The rain collects in a corner outside, it’s probably something… Read More ›
writing
The last days before the equinox
Fall’s moody shadows, pine needles, leaves: all that starts from above one day will drop, past the mountain peaks Jack Kerouac walked, they probably looked the same to him too, it’s hard to believe those photos of people in the… Read More ›
The lake waves look like hands on the shore
Now the lake advances in creeping hands along the shore and the lifeguard chair is empty, there’s the threat of showers, the tree boughs move with the underwater look of deep-sea creatures in slow motion and the frog beneath our… Read More ›
As several disturbances head our way
I looked up and my family was gone, lost in the folds of Powell’s bookstore, Portland, the litmosphere they call it, and I wandered the displays sniffing cakes of handmade soaps, glassware designed for gluten-free beer, branded. All the Portlanders… Read More ›
The pink question mark of chance
I asked Dawn if she wants to pet the dog to please do it outside because she’s shedding again and I have to vacuum like every day, and though it’s only the den, it fills the canister in just one… Read More ›
Up Red Marble Quarry Road, Waitts Lake, Washington
I thought it was the shadow of a butterfly but it was just a leaf falling, they’ve started gathering on the ground. More days in the hammock with just the sound of wind chimes and jets, birds, kids: realizing I… Read More ›
What I learned giving speeches when I was 12
In last week’s Democratic National Convention comedian Sarah Silverman quoted her shrink, who said ‘we don’t get what we want, we get what we think we deserve.’ I don’t remember why I chose to compete in an oratorical contest when I… Read More ›
How the wind played us like an instrument that night
The morning feeding ritual at Mike’s, two dogs, two cats, the quiet crunching of animals chewing, a dishwasher churning, the bathroom fan, the soothing sound of it like rain hitting the roof, going down the drain spouts into the ground:… Read More ›
The motivations of a ghost
When I took my first sabbatical in 2009, I left in July and came back mid-November. With the way it worked, you could go for up to six months and return to your old position but after that, and up… Read More ›
Yoda’s coat
The vet with eyes a bit out of proportion to the rest of her head, a cartoon owl who talks too fast at high tones, she takes us through what we missed this past winter when we were in the… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 