Getting off to cough syrup seems like a lower order high but now that l’ve resigned all vices but caffeine I’m not above it. Weird dreams? No problem. The melatonin did that for a while but got too weird for… Read More ›
Memoir
Ripeness
It could have been the sound of the church bells on my early morning walk, going through the last few years of late August memories. Parsing through the past was like looking across a vista, trying to make out what… Read More ›
Chance (?)
Took the Iron Gate trail but varied my approach by going the reverse direction up the Devil’s Backside. Discharged the bear spray I got in Montana in 2018 to make sure it still worked because you’re supposed to swap those… Read More ›
Severe weather
It was a good week. At the top of the list, my dad’s heart surgery was a success. He has AFib, an irregular heart pattern that can lead to bad things. The surgeons did an ablation to create tiny scars… Read More ›
Firsts and lasts
Charlotte, about to start her last year of high school, says she’s starting to have her last firsts: last first day of school. Or this could be her “first last” too, school-wise. Last homecoming dance. “First last” and “last first”… Read More ›
Last quarter
I walked to our neighborhood park, the one on the lake by our house. It gets a lot of traffic this time of year with the early morning anglers fishing off the dock and the teenagers and toddlers who flock… Read More ›
Little Fury Things
At the right angle with the morning sun coming through the Tiffany lampshade looked furry due to a thin layer of animal hair attached to the glass by grease or film. You could say the same for most appliances in… Read More ›
Ancient flags and dragons
8/9/25 The sound of the owl in the middle of the night is a distant probe, a pulse. In the east on the bottom of the horizon there are two new stars, maybe a planet. The sun rises closer to… Read More ›
Grounded
It is now the time of the wildfires and web worms. The digital map of fire shows their size and location, and we look surrounded—though the air quality is still good. The web worms gather in clumps on certain kinds… Read More ›
The dark magic of the garage
The garage was fucked. The garage, that dumping ground for all our excess, for all we could not process or endure. The garage was the physical manifestation of our gluttony and waste. The garage was bombastic in scale: a proud… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 