Up again before the timed lights came on. And then they were on. The cold that has you coiled in on yourself yearning for warmth. First thoughts of the day, mirror image of the last: how the coffee tumbler was… Read More ›
existentialism
Landscape painting in a dental waiting room
Pale river rock of a moon cool to the touch. A notch someone cut in a log as a bench. What am I and this ego out here in the morning dark? Eno has a painting on a post card… Read More ›
Season’s surplus
There is more life than I can use, so I squander it on fruitless things like video games or bad books or going to bed early. The funny way life inches forward mostly unseen. The spring blooms that would bring… Read More ›
Indefinite loop
2023 By the time spring started I hadn’t worked for four months. There’d been a short gig in December but prior to that, nothing since June. The agency I contract with slows down in the summer as their primary client… Read More ›
The pearly everlasting
We meet mom’s friend Helga for dinner at the Croatian guy Tony’s new restaurant and sit inside at the best table (“without shadows,” Tony says). It’s called Adriatic cuisine, which I take to mean Mediterranean, though my geography and culinary… Read More ›
Ghost story
This is a series of posts written from my mom’s house in Germany. Many of the restaurants and people I know are gone late August but some are starting to trickle back before I leave, in early September. So the… Read More ›
Everything we have we’ll lose
When you say goodbye to someone you love it’s a knife’s edge between the past and present. They are both with you and not. It can feel like the amputee’s phantom limb or Schrödinger’s cat, the seam between seasons when… Read More ›
The drive back from Portland
The drive back from Portland is not just a drive back from Portland, it’s every drive you’ve ever made. It’s the roadtrips with the family, the one you made to the Redwoods, the one with a girlfriend in the late… Read More ›
In defense of things
Dawn’s mom Beth is moving out of her house and downsizing to a senior living community. She’s lived in this house since 1982, so it’s a big deal. If memories are like fallen leaves on the ground then the soil… Read More ›
The chime of the city clock
I don’t mind having more of the bed to be on when Dawn is gone, and I’ve stopped feeling guilty about it. I spread out like a starfish and sink into a deep sleep. But when the clocks toll downstairs… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 