I’d visibly gained weight after my trip to Europe. The weight that hangs on the gut in flaps. I was way too proud for all that and felt dirtied by my own excess: bread, butter, cheese, pastries, cake. I got… Read More ›
Memoir
American Pie
This is the final post in a two-week series of travelogues set in Besigheim, Germany with my mom, Linda Pearse. It’s a queer, ghostly light the moon makes through the fog and the early morning dark. I’m now used to… Read More ›
Copies, backups, forgeries
Once you get into the valley it’s a sea of fog. I take the footpath down by the river through the dark and the moon gets swallowed. The sky looks the way old TV screens looked in the 70s after… Read More ›
A form of removal
I wrote to remember but you could never come close. The writing became a form of reliving, a cheap copy. It was the worst kind of navel gazing writing letters to your future selves. But I would sooner err on… Read More ›
Bringing it all back home
The shower at Laurent and Nanou’s isn’t like the ones back home, it’s an exposed clawfoot tub with no shower lining. They keep a squeegee the size of a broomstick beside it to push the water into a central drain…. Read More ›
The A8 to Karlsruhe
Outside it was so cold I could see my breath, with frost on the grass and all the trees looking shriveled. I waited until just before sunrise to climb the Himmelsleiter and that made the steep hillsides look pink-gold. Evenly… Read More ›
Still-life red
Woke late, found it October all of the sudden, took the route through the wooded valley off the Himmelsleiter. Got caught behind a class of students also taking the steps up but who mysteriously vanished. Pocketed a fresh chestnut fallen… Read More ›
On mouse traps and handcuffs
I couldn’t make sense of the mouse trap; it was a catch and release model. Two doors on either side of the cage with what looked like a metal toothpick to spear a piece of cheese, or something you’d use… Read More ›
Erste und Letzte (firsts and lasts)
That first walk up the Himmelsleiter was the best and darkest, my first morning back in Germany. The Himmelsleiter, that long set of narrow steps up the vineyards, through the spooky underpass beneath the train tracks in the dark, crossing… Read More ›
Vivid Youth
Tired as I was I still had that Christmas morning feeling of excitement that had me wanting to get out of bed. I’d been up since 01:11 and committed myself to staying in bed until 3. Something about 3 vs…. Read More ›
Bill Pearse 