For years the days flowed from an endless tap, the morning waves at the bus stop goodbye, the evening kisses goodnight. The cycle of days spinning to weekends, holidays, to new seasons, the coming of age: a first crush, the… Read More ›
Memoir
Things that I will keep
The narrative recounts a trip from Stratford to London, reflecting on themes of unemployment, nostalgia, and family experiences.
Where are we now?
I’d never flown into Germany in January and pictured it somehow colder and wetter, though resolved to make do for four weeks with just rolled-up clothes in my carryon and not check a bag. Bono had written an essay on… Read More ›
That last winter in the UK
Days of clouds and rain, low light. Light between eight and four with the rest more about the dark. Stripped of any daily responsibilities her life lost purpose and being a doer with nothing to do she went a bit… Read More ›
Two sides of the same coin
It’s gotten increasingly harder to take all-cold showers as the season’s worn on. But it never disappoints, that first moment of sensory shock. Scenes of women giving birth in the Baltic from some grainy film we watched when Dawn was… Read More ›
It’s more than a feeling
Growing up in the 70s it’s hard to reconcile the kid I was then with the person I am now. A shoebox full of Polaroids and old prints, in the days before smartphones when everyone looks surprised by the camera,… Read More ›
Source code and origin stories
Maybe it’s just the light but in that first picture of me I don’t look born as much as I do unearthed, the way dad’s holding me out like some product of an archaeological dig. Dad’s so young his beard… Read More ›
Songs in the attic
This morning the fog was so thick on the plateau it blurred all the trees but when I got up the road you could see the very edge of it, like where the fog officially began or ended in the… Read More ›
First night with LSD and the police
How can you just leave me standing alone in a world that’s so cold The night ended like all nights, with the dawn. But this was like no other, that first night in Erie, Pennsylvania. The rugby player Grundy drove… Read More ›
Reconstruction of the fables
I thought I couldn’t slow down any more than I had, but I was wrong. Now taking late morning naps. Not a good look when my wife is working her ass off, too busy to hang her clothes. The house… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 