At the end of the summer, on the last days before school started, I’d go into the classroom with my dad at the school where he taught. There was a periodic table of the elements on one wall, chalkboards and… Read More ›
memoirists
Discreet Music | January 16, 2018
I made marrow soup for the first time (or released the marrow I guess, into a soup). And I took a hot bath and imagined myself settling into it the same as the chicken carcass, reduced. I flickered in and… Read More ›
“Life Before Fabric Softener” (a memoir)
Interrupting my journal-in-Germany series today with an excerpt from my new, to-be written memoir “Life Before Fabric Softener.” It starts on the 20-year anniversary of my first extended stay in Europe, in the south of France. December, 1997 Capitol Hill,… Read More ›
Then the rain came
The cat knocked the plastic owl off the patio pot and its head separated from the body and rolled away, then lay in plain sight with the rain coming down, too hard to fix. And in the morning I found… Read More ›
“These are the days now” | Field notes from the Pacific coast
This is a series of posts I started in late May and plan to continue for 40 days, with a goal of hitting 50,000 words by July 5 (at 30K!). It’s inspired by a three-day solo trek on the Washington… Read More ›
‘Like frogs or rabbits’ | on living in the present, and wandering
May 15, 2017 Faint rain, imagined snow. Mid May and it’s still stew weather, heavy stouts. I have to run the heat in the morning driving in to work but refuse to wear a jacket and then turn off the… Read More ›
A stream of consciousness, passing through April
We felt it winding down, that April. Who gets to be in Europe for nine months like that? I had no business complaining about having to go, it was time. It was starting to leaf out on the trees along… Read More ›
The fear to really be | what scares us most, about art
It had been many months since I went around the corner from our house to the new development. Why would I?—turning left instead of right, I could go down to the lake. Turning right, and right again, they’d taken out… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 