It’s that desperate time of year when most of the leaves are down and my morning walks are dark and windy. The time of year I took my last solo backpacking trip, last October. I’d quit drinking and the trip… Read More ›
James Joyce
Far country falls
On that gray November day we settled into a small town on the west coast of Scotland. Most of the leaves were down and the colors resigned to brown, the red on the roadside you’d mistake for leaves was really… Read More ›
Dead souls soliloquy (for Archie Loss)
The cat is all business, can be found in the morning by the garage door flap like a killer in the shadows waiting in the dark for anything trying to get inside. Dawn remarked, there’s mouse innards in the utility… Read More ›
“Hang on to yourself” (the faith, identity theme)
Half-way complete today! This is a series of posts I started in late May and plan to continue for 40 days, with a goal of hitting 50,000 words by July 5. It’s inspired by a three-day solo trek on the… Read More ›
The rat torture scene reveal | Field notes from the Pacific coast
This is a series of posts I started in late May and plan to continue for 40 days, with a goal of hitting 50,000 words by July 5 (now +25% complete!). It’s inspired by a three-day solo trek on the… Read More ›
Pledge made in Galway last December
I came down to the lake after I left my job and talked to the unemployment office on the cell phone. They said I was eligible for X dollars but just because you’re eligible doesn’t mean you’ll get it, you… Read More ›
Spellbound colander of treetops amid bruised cloud aperture
It’s funny, when I think about James Joyce now I wonder how much of his art is judged by what he said vs. how he said it, the fact he freed others to rethink writing: or that his book went… Read More ›
‘You got a decent enough do in the Brazen Head for a bob’
Running from our flat to the oldest bar in Ireland in the rain because you have to do that at least once in life, and it’s so close I make it there without losing my breath and find the same… Read More ›
Rattle my bones all over the stones
Saturday, all of us on damp streets swaddled against the wind coming off Dublin Bay, wandering northeast from our flat past large churches, intersections where the asphalt’s painted LOOK RIGHT, LOOK LEFT, and the people have complexions that remind me… Read More ›
The true meaning of karma
I nap while the beef simmers in the stove, thickening over the house, day sagging into night. There is coffee and beer and water in between to wash us out, to cleanse us, bobbing up and down upon days. I… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 