Bill Pearse

Recent Posts - page 28

• Billy Joel’s “Piano Ham”: An Appreciation

  By Bill Pearse on October 22, 2023 • ( 7 )

  Ivan Pavlov once said, “Now what do I do with all these dogs?” But Pavlov also invented what we now call “triggering,” and few songs trigger as … Billy Joel’s “Piano Ham”: An Appreciation

• Don’t put on any airs when you’re down on Rue Morgue Avenue

  By Bill Pearse on October 21, 2023 • ( 18 )

  

  Life had a way of folding in on itself, unraveling in bizarre and beautiful patterns. You could watch and feel like you were a part of the fold or outside of it, not living but still alive. The pattern was… Read More ›

• The terror of knowing what this world is about

  By Bill Pearse on October 10, 2023 • ( 10 )

  

  Niraj Argaven grips my hand in the grocery store aisle and pronounces his name, moves to my side and hands the phone to his daughter, puts his arm around my back and faces the camera. I am now part of… Read More ›

• Waning crescent

  By Bill Pearse on September 17, 2023 • ( 14 )

  

  Here it was, my whole life splayed out before me. Some days, just for an instant, I felt like I could do anything. The problem was, it felt so good I dwelled in that feeling and did nothing at all…. Read More ›

• Portrait of the artist as a portrait model

  By Bill Pearse on September 8, 2023 • ( 16 )

  

  No one smiles in these old portraits. They look stiff, like they’re already dead. Maybe it’s the knowledge only portrait models have that makes them look like that, deciding how you’ll look forever. They look trapped in their own time…. Read More ›

• When the pines begin to cry

  By Bill Pearse on September 3, 2023 • ( 16 )

  

  It had been a long time since I heard the owls cry in the night. Last night in bed I counted three in the distance, a hoot-hoot with a menacing tone. It reminded me of waking in Marrakech to the… Read More ›

• After blackberry picking

  By Bill Pearse on August 24, 2023 • ( 10 )

  

  I remember the day Lily and I came home from our road trip. We’d left Utah on a Sunday morning and reached Seattle by lunchtime on Tuesday. Hadn’t driven more than six hours a day, surprised by how quickly it… Read More ›

• New school blues

  By Bill Pearse on August 22, 2023 • ( 0 )

  

  In the dream I am in my underwear and we are in a crowded public square this time of year, this going back to school time we are all of us in our underwear in our dreams looking down, wondering… Read More ›

• Bookending

  By Bill Pearse on August 20, 2023 • ( 15 )

  

  You could see where the landscape fabric was poking through the bark I put down in the beds and that rankled me. I hated seeing the irregularities, the underlying scheme. I could get really anal retentive like that. We noticed… Read More ›

• Sand tray therapy

  By Bill Pearse on August 11, 2023 • ( 10 )

  

  It is here I feel most at home. Oil City. The worst name for the best place. No oil, no city: a developer’s name, a get-rich scheme. There is no imagination in the name only nature here, no boundaries or… Read More ›

• ‹ Older Entries
• Newer Entries ›