When I look deep inside myself to remember why I joined the Mountaineers climbing club, the only reason I can come up with is that I’m cocky. It may be a male-thing, too. I had already climbed Mount Rainier, which… Read More ›
pacific northwest
Winter’s Playground
Drinking good wine out of paper cups at the Howard Johnson’s in the mountains, the knocking through the wall could be the neighbors signaling Keep it down, or the neighbors knocking each other around, with the bed frame. We decide… Read More ›
Lower case letters
I got up then, it was time to get up, and I made my way down to the den, to write. The clock said 3:20 and it took a good long time to make out whether it said 3:20 or… Read More ›
Seaview, 2003
We lived in a 800 square-foot, two bedroom shack in West Seattle built in 1919. You had to go outside to do the laundry, to get to the basement. That was the one drawback because the basement flooded, you had… Read More ›
As I lay dying, lying about death
All the people who work at the bar seem to have part of their brains missing. They’re confused about what’s on tap and always have to check with someone else; I wonder if they’re hungover or just stupid. And that’s… Read More ›
When night falls like this: life, in black and white
The streets are gray and everything on the edges has gone to brown, might be dead, hangs on waiting, like us. Looks dead, probably isn’t. I stare out the window at work and night has started at 4 o’clock. It… Read More ›
Poet modeling: notes from the dentist’s waiting room
I walk the city in the morning as it’s waking up: shop owners sweeping the sidewalks after the storm, lights coming on in the apartment windows, a million lives to live in the red brick buildings overlooking the city, due… Read More ›
The New Gothic
I don’t know what brought on this movement in the 70s, but I’m glad for it: glad, because there’s gloomy music I can turn to for inspiration. Glad, because I know there’s others with dark thoughts who stick to the… Read More ›
Caught between the slide alder and Charybdis
Brad over-estimated my climbing abilities and I didn’t know enough to know I had, too. We got the idea to climb a couple peaks in the Olympic mountains in early November, which is hard because you have about half the… Read More ›
Sunbreak
Unsteady steps on a Saturday, counting the days down. Sunday’s trash night. Monday’s swimming, Tuesday’s soccer. I’ve grown to hate the pedestrians out here. Everything about the west coast I love but it’s the pedestrians, the way they gloat, the… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 