I look at the painting but don’t recognize it, don’t remember where it came from, some faraway place, an alpine lake in blues, indigo, watercolor. I bathe myself in the sea salts of home. The smell of the pines outside… Read More ›
Technology
A Bit Green
I bragged that after six days on the road, I was only on my second T-shirt. I wouldn’t have taken off the first one, had it not been for the stains that were either beer or coffee, maybe both. We… Read More ›
The earnestness of the 70s
Time Passages, Al Stewart. I grew up in the 70s, the 80s…the photos are embarrassing. Equally so for the 60s, I’m guessing. Songs like Time Passages, well: it’s good, it’s earnest, and yet it has a bit of cheese to… Read More ›
The Apple ate the Blackberry
I bought my first iPhone in 2007, as a gift to myself before our second daughter was born. I figured there was the threat we’d run out of cash now, with two kids, and so I could justify a $500… Read More ›
The low-level anxiety of modern life
I’m now assigned to a new project that will go the next two or three years, and I’ve been on it a year already. We had our kick-off meeting this week, had two meetings prior to that, to discuss and… Read More ›
The tip of my finger, the iPod dial, the distance of convenience
Convenience sucks: it’s why we throw so much crap out at Starbucks, at McDonalds. The single-serve American dream of instant gratification. Email thank you notes, Tom Riddle’s diary: “friends” guiding you through a phantom-life with a divining rod, by remote… Read More ›
Disconnect me
It was just me and Dawn then, driving out to eastern Washington to a cabin north of Spokane, the one-year anniversary of 9-11. It seemed a peaceful, solemn place to observe it: removed from people, surrounded by overgrown grass fields,… Read More ›
When I’m there I’m not
Connecting! I’m on the text now because I got one while I sat at the restaurant across from my kids, coloring. We step outside to take it down, it’s so good. (It’s like we’re here now, but not. I can see… Read More ›
Date stamps and blank tapes
Mix tapes from friends are like photos or letters you save, to take you back in time. Like a letter, they take care to create, and there’s more of the person in the print. Mike mailed tapes to me when… Read More ›
Fake rooms for people
In the mid 90s I didn’t have a computer and had to rent time on a box at an internet cafe on Broadway. It was dark, small and felt sleazy: four or five of us with our backs to each… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 