Alan talks about his time in the SEALs but I never probe for more because he knows I’m a writer and I feel like a thief casing someone’s mansion when he starts telling a story.
Memoir
The comfort in patterns
We were getting near the end of it though the news warned of a fourth wave. And I’d been off work for a month now which seemed great from a distance but got strange the more I got inside of… Read More ›
The cosmic distance ladder
Morning time in the old German village where we once lived. The narrow stone roads that feel like a labyrinth, more for pedestrians than cars. The sound of tire tread when cars pass slow. Everyone smoking. Past the Italian bakery… Read More ›
It’s not in the old Polaroids buried in the dark
The story of your life is a series of well-told lies delivering a feeling of truth. No different than the lives we live. It isn’t the truth, but a sense of it we want. As readers, as travelers through this life, memory is one thing but the feeling it conveys is another.
This bag is not a toy
It is the best day of my life when I get a call from the editor asking me to report on a town meeting and submit a thousand words. Even though it’s just a weekly it’s my first time published, my name in print.
Winter’s Playground
We are in Michael’s boyfriend’s apartment getting into Michael’s boyfriend’s bag. Michael is gay before anyone else in Pittsburgh. He wears scarves and earrings and looks beautiful but doesn’t act like a priss. People talk behind his back but he doesn’t care because he’s not insecure, it’s just who he is.
The art of make-believe and singing in the shower
The acts of being and pretending are one and the same through an artful delusion of self. That form of delusion is how people with big dreams make them a reality: by not letting reality get in the way.
Lifetime
There is a space between us and the ones we love and I want to understand why we allow that distance. Or talk about what gets in our way of crossing it.
Roll call
I muscled my way through writing as I did with mountaineering, relying more on brute force than actual technique. In mountaineering it nearly got me killed and as a writer it kept me at the junior varsity level of blogger…. Read More ›
Magic, or otherwise
I walked eight miles and didn’t see another soul. Another hundred and I’d cross the Oregon border. I got to the lake, cleared a ledge of snow off by a small stand of trees and pulled out my tent, moving fast to stake it out.
Bill Pearse 