There was a time we used to just sit and watch our kids’ swim lessons at the Y and it was cute and sweet but that time has passed, and the last two days I take my laptop and wait… Read More ›
writing process
Fantastic Erratic: on muses, flow, and writing in spurts
When I started blogging, I posted for the first three years without a single visitor, not even my mom. It didn’t matter because, a.) I didn’t really understand (and wasn’t interested in) social media, b.) I didn’t think my writing… Read More ›
What we saw once in the future
When mom wakes and sees Eberhard’s bed lamp is still on she goes downstairs and finds him at the table with a bunch of dead roots, a screwdriver and a bottle of Port that’s half empty or half full, depending… Read More ›
Final thoughts during the flight safety video leaving Newark
When my mom asked if I needed a pair of warmer socks for our walk (I’m 45) I reminded her this is the guy who’s slept on the side of glaciers and gotten up in the middle of the night… Read More ›
The story of the mason’s apprentice, portrait or landscape
Arrived in the dark last night at a castle near a port town on the southwest coast of Scotland, woke to the sound of an owl stirring by our window so close it sounded like it could be in the… Read More ›
Last Wednesday in Edinburgh
Thursday. Full-on tears, sobbing, from the kids — our night-time ritual protracted to around 11. The onset of hormones with Lily, Charlotte tags along for good measure. I build our first fire of autumn, the top floor of our Edinburgh… Read More ›
‘Is evil something you are, or something you do?’
We’ve hung a roadside atlas of Scotland over the door in our flat, draped there like something we shot and dragged in for drying — it looks so big on paper, but you can see much of it we’ve covered… Read More ›
The Table of Contents
Our last morning in Arbroath, the wind and rain have stopped and everything has gone still. I walk the estate in the opposite direction from last time, spot two beasts in the distance, perhaps the same that startled Dawn the… Read More ›
The someday, faraway passages
The want to be, could be, should be is too hard to be and easier left for another day that’s faraway, unsaid. There is no day now, no deadlines or rules, no place to be but the blind insides of space, where… Read More ›
Dots on the hill
Last Friday in the States until sometime next spring. Moon fattens to a claw. Danced the trifecta of drink starting with Tequila out of pint glasses sucked through straws, licking the sides, backcountry animal tongue. Took the morning walk to… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 