A guy shouted at us, Get away from the building! My boss was pale white and crying, all the blood drawn out of her face. Doris, my colleague, looked like she was 10 years old, as if the fear of… Read More ›
Memoir
Prism
The prism is a piece of cut crystal hung in my window. We bought it at the Jersey shore in the late 70s when I was a little boy. I asked my dad for it when I was going off… Read More ›
Six Arms
My first bar in Seattle was Six Arms. Glen was a skinny guy who worked there and drove a silver 280-Z. He was sick with HIV, and they had a jar to collect donations for his treatments, but he died… Read More ›
Buckets of Rain
I got into Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks in high school while riding in the back of Mark’s Mustang, on the way to New Hope, Pennsylvania. The car was fast, and we hugged the twists and turns along the Delaware… Read More ›
Death is not the end
It’s the only dream I’ve had where I actually die in it. Normally, if I’m being chased by something or I’m falling, I wake up before it’s over, or I find a way out. But this dream ended with the… Read More ›
Sentiment, sediment, and what’s at the bottom of it
Alright, so I am sentimental about people, places and things. I keep old notes in my coats, a mish-mash of crap in my sock drawer, and I’ve been known to haunt dead-end streets where I necked with a girl. I… Read More ›
On Memoirs, Getting Lost in the Labyrinth
I’ve gone back to A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man for inspiration, this year. As I suffer through the exfoliation phase of writing and the need to purge my life through memoirs, I hope it will lead… Read More ›
The Train to Portland
Shana worked at the IKEA south of Seattle, where she met Marne. Marne was with Don, and Don and I hit it off. Don and I made plans to go to Portland over Memorial Day weekend, which is where we… Read More ›
Temp Work
They reassigned me from the chemical sales group to a new one, in a different building, the main office where the CEO resided. Here in the lobby was a gallery celebrating the company’s history, through oil paintings of all the… Read More ›
Getting into fights on email
Rich and I got in a fight on email, in 1996: I had two responsibilities in my job, and one of them was to collect information from secretaries once a month. I sent a form email to all of them,… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 