I parse out just enough cat nip for one of the cats to get off, but not both, and let them duke it out like Siamese fighting fish, all hisses and rear leg strokes fanning the guts, fangs, stoned-out faces,… Read More ›
Memoir
“Helpless”
I don’t think my parents liked me having the bedroom door closed when Marie was over, but it wasn’t tightly enforced. We closed the door and smiled at each other: there wasn’t anywhere else to sit in my room, just… Read More ›
The Quintessential Tune
СЕУТА И МЕЛИЛЬЯ. When I meet someone new and get to talking music, they’ll often ask what I like and when I ask them the same, if they say they like everything it usually means they don’t. Spend some time with… Read More ›
Backwater (Philly memoir reblog)
I am surrounded by dots, to connect. One analogy is a sky full of stars with constellations and stories, how they got there. Another, drops of rain falling on a lake, how they ripple in circles and random patterns dissolving… Read More ›
Geographic Tongue
I’m told it’s common, affecting 2-3% of the population, which doesn’t sound common, but intriguing still: Geographic Tongue. I picked my hygienist because she seems genuinely passionate about oral health. When I ask for more information she gets excited talking… Read More ›
On wood-gathering and storytelling
The trail description said it gained 700 feet, but I didn’t remember it all happening in the first five minutes. I didn’t read the notices at the trailhead or carry a map because it’s just a canyon, one way in,… Read More ›
Bouncer’s Logic
Modest Mouse was small then, just three guys from Issaquah. On Tuesdays, a gay bar featured straight acts and it was my first chance to see them, my favorite band. It was cold for Seattle, and we huddled in Mike’s… Read More ›
The Head of the Snake: Backcountry Ballad in ‘E’
Superstitious, sentimental, stupid: put these together and that’s me going back into the mountains to get in shape again. So my first outing had to be perfect and auspicious and just how it used to be five years ago, when… Read More ›
Lost in the woods
It wasn’t in the outfit I chose for myself each day before going to work, and it wasn’t in the mirror or the photographs on our walls at home. I lost track of where it went and sometimes wondered if I… Read More ›
What little light reflects on the lake
The house had the look of drunks about it, the left behind, random disorder of things not put away, fallen on their sides, not cared for. Light bulbs, plush toys, DVDs all sharing the same shelf by the stereo speaker…. Read More ›
Bill Pearse 