I don’t know what it is about me and hats, but I keep losing mine. There was the green Irish cap I got in a small, West Cork town: I wrote the name inside the rim (SKIBBEREEN 12-15) to mark… Read More ›
Memoir
The Fall of 2015 | 90-day family road trip, UK
We were living in Germany but didn’t have a visa and had to leave for three months, had to leave the Schengen and most of Western Europe: so we decided on the UK because they spoke English there and we… Read More ›
‘Do androids dream of electric sheep?’
In the den at night with the flue to the gas fire open it’s so drafty it feels like we’re outside, and Dawn and I wrap ourselves in blankets, play vinyl, and it’s a pain to get up and have… Read More ›
The Firth of Forth
In the morning it was darker than we remembered it—Lily called out to Alexa three times to change the alarm, and I went downstairs to start the coffee, to check my phone. My vision was bad from the bug that… Read More ›
Wednesday’s twilight anthem
The Jupiter’s Beard is fanned-out pornographic in our front yard, exposed to the root. And the grass is so dead, it’s what Gregg Allman’s beard must have looked like before he died, the same gold-straw color, drawn out thick. It’s… Read More ›
They know it’s time to go
After 89 days without a good rain it was definitive it would come back Sunday. We were gearing up for the first fire of the season, a stew, some red wine, music. We’d move the patio furniture to the garage,… Read More ›
‘Essence of Cessna’ | on success
Thirty-one years ago the film Pretty in Pink came out. We watched it on Netflix but didn’t remember anything: not Andrew McCarthy’s flickering eyes, nor Molly Ringwald’s quivering lips. Nor the scene with the two of them in a library… Read More ›
The denial phase
Dawn and I sat at the top of our yard after we got our things out and talked. I had everything drying in the driveway, the sleeping bags draped over the cars. They didn’t need dried out, I just liked… Read More ›
Six days in the bush, Pacific Northwest style
I came to the bridge above the river, the one described in the guidebook. I’d taken a picture of it last time but it was only a green braid in the gray canyon rock, reduced down to that…. Read More ›
One window ajar, first light on Pine Lake
I sat outside under a tree with King Tubby playing on my Bluetooth speakers and crocosmia fronds tickling the air, the moon a half melon, the whites of my nails. Talked to my dad across the country, the sound of… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 