 Market Street at lunchtime before the pandemic buzzed with energy in San Francisco. 🕰️ Originally published May 15, 2017. Revisited August 2025. Back then, it was the Westfield San Francisco Centre—anchored by Nordstrom at the top, somewhere around the 5th or 7th floor. You’d ascend through its spiraling escalators, each level revealing a new vantage, a new temptation. The building felt like a vertical promenade: concentric balconies curving around a central atrium, light cascading from the dome above. Floor by floor, you rose—until finally, Nordstrom. A cathedral of commerce perched at the summit. Outside, Market Street pulsed with life. It was lunch hour—lines snaked out of every café, shoppers darted in and out of storefronts, and the sidewalks felt like arteries of a living, breathing downtown. That moment—so ordinary, so electric—inspired a simple idea: What if we gave workers two hours for lunch—not just to eat, but to participate in the city’s economy and spirit? The proposal was playful but sincere:
It was, as I wrote then, “just a thought.” But it was also a love letter to a city that thrived on foot traffic, spontaneity, and shared space. Now, in 2025, that Nordstrom is gone. Market Street feels quieter. The pandemic reshaped our rhythms. Remote work emptied offices. Retail corridors echo with vacancy. And yet—I still believe in the power of lunch. Of lingering. Of civic ritual. Let workers wander. Let them wait in line. Let them eat slowly. Let them browse shelves and sidewalks. Let them belong. Let the City invest in presence. Let lunch be long, and let the city thrive.
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 They’ve crossed thresholds with me, spine by spine, like old friends who never ask why. Sometimes a story grips you so tightly that the world beyond its pages dissolves, and all the tasks of daily living—packing boxes, canceling utilities, forwarding mail—seem strangely pale beside the fevered heartbeat of fiction.
This is one of those moments. If this is the final blog I write at this address, let it be a testament to the magnetic pull of Painted People, a story that’s become more real, more urgent, than the logistics of leaving or the map of what comes next. The house is full of lists and half-filled boxes, yet my mind lingers in the twilight world of Twin Peaks, San Francisco, where Klara Belinsky stands on the cusp of everything. I find myself torn—not just between fiction and reality, but between the gentle closure of one chapter and the suspenseful promise of another. It’s a peculiar envy: wishing for an assistant or partner to share in the chaos, someone to shoulder the mundane so I can remain immersed in the fever pitch of Painted People’s climax. There’s an irony here that’s hard to ignore. Life demands I set down my pen and tend to the necessary, but the story demands everything. The murder at the story’s core—unresolved, pressing—calls out even in the late hours when the city goes quiet and again in the pale light of morning. Painted People is at a pivotal moment; to leave it unfinished feels almost like a betrayal, yet the world insists. So, for what may be the last lines composed in this house, I offer the keynotes of this journey. And as an offering, an excerpt—perhaps too long, but entirely necessary: Painted People Excerpt: Chapter 21 ACT 1 -Eye Witness It was a heartbeat past midnight—a single minute pulled into sharp focus by the echo of gunfire. The city lay breathless in the cradle of the beginning of the next day after Christmas, but for Klara Belinsky, sleep vanished the instant the three shots ripped the silence apart. The staccato cracks weren’t fireworks, though for an instant, her mind tried to pretend they were. She jerked upright in bed, pulse hammering in her ears, and stumbled toward the window. The Erikson house loomed below on Pemberton Steps, but Klara’s world had shrunk to the slice of night she could see through the trembling slit in her curtains. The chill of the glass seeped through, but her instincts begged her closer—closer to the unknown. Beyond the pane, the world had gone jagged. Figures burst out of shadow like wraiths, their movements desperate and erratic, limbs flailing through shafts of sodium light. The far-off wail of sirens—were they drawing nearer, or was it just the blood roaring in her ears? Even on Christmas there were always fires, always chaos, but this...this was different. A bladed wind knifed through the loose seal of her window, carrying the smell of cordite and panic. Klara pressed her forehead to the icy pane, fingers white-knuckled on the curtain. Down on the pavement, a woman with a mess of red hair hurtled away from the carnage, her blue jacket a flare against the gloom. The jacket snapped and fluttered wildly—Klara could almost feel the terror radiating from the stranger, the animal need to escape. Then she saw the car—a white coupe, its headlights slashing the dark, engine shuddering. It was parked askew, as if its driver had abandoned all thought of order. The logo—a blur of silver, Omni? BMW? The details swam, not quite in focus, but the coupe’s shape was burned into her vision. That roof window, half open to the bitter air—it was a small thing, but maybe important. Klara’s heart was running wild, ready to bolt from her chest. She dug her nails into her palm, fighting the urge to look away. She forced herself to drink in the details: the color of the car, the woman’s frantic sprint, the way the streetlight cast the alley in a shifting, almost predatory glow. Every movement outside was a threat—every shadow, a warning. A phone was in her hand, though Klara didn’t remember reaching for it. The cold plastic was slick with sweat. Her lungs constricted, and for a trembling second, she wondered if she’d managed to breathe at all. The streetlamp flickered, throwing claws of shadow across her walls, and her own reflection stared back, ghostlike, wide-eyed. She hesitated, knuckles hovering over the keypad. Calling 911 would mean stepping into this nightmare, making it real. Her mind spun with dread—what if they could see her? What if the shooter was still there? But the sound of another siren, closer this time, snapped her into action. Someone might be dying. Someone might need her. There: the night’s pulse, the chill, the knife-edge of danger. The fiction feels so much more alive than the boxes stacked in the hallway. Painted People is not finished, not really, but our time here is. And so, as I turn my attention to the business of moving—canceling this, transferring that, letting go—I carry Klara and her feverish story forward, knowing that fiction waits faithfully for its author’s return. If this is goodbye to writing at this address, let it be with gratitude: for the stories that have sustained me and for the possibility of picking up the thread somewhere new. Here’s to Painted People, to unfinished business, to all the worlds we inhabit—on the page and beyond. Onward and upward, even as we pack away the past.  View of Peekskill: A final resting place for Painted People to exhale its last line. This weekend, I nearly gave up. The apartment—yes, the one I mentioned before, the one that quietly threaded itself into my writing—had become a symbol of something deeper. I was depressed. Angry. Not just at circumstance, but at God. Or at the idea of God. The one I was taught to believe in. The one I still want to believe is real.
Faith is a peculiar thing. It doesn’t always feel holy. Sometimes it feels like a wager. A test. A dare. Will you still trust when everything feels rigged against you? Will you spiral again, punish yourself for wanting too much, for believing too hard? I’ve been down that road before. I know the signs. The self-abuse. The quiet unraveling. But this time, something held. The apartment was approved. And I didn’t falter. I didn’t fall. I got back up. Back on track. Not because I was strong, but because I was willing to wait. To ache. To believe, even when belief felt foolish. Faith, after all, is not the absence of doubt. It’s what survives it.  Peekskill Regeneration Farm: The cucumbers east of August—still green, still dreaming. The blossom remembers rain, the fruit remembers heat. The hurricane, Erin, curled northward along the Atlantic, brushing the East Coast with cooler breath—its arrival a quiet undoing of the heat that had pressed against us for days. The rain, gentle and insistent, coaxed yellow cucumber blossoms into fruit overnight. I watched them swell in silence, their transformation a kind of private miracle. On the family farm, such growth was slower, more deliberate. But here, in this liminal space between storm and stillness, the cucumbers seem to leap into being. This morning, while walking and photographing the river’s edge, I picked one. It was small, firm, and fragrant—its skin still damp from the night’s rain. I ate it by the water, where the wind was soft and a sailboat drifted without urgency. The cucumber tasted like memory, but brighter. More immediate. As if it had skipped the long arc of cultivation and arrived fully formed, ready to be consumed. With less than two weeks of August left, I’ve returned to my books. September waits like a threshold, and I read daily to prepare for its crossing. Steinbeck’s East of Eden sits beside me again, a companion I’ve never truly put down. Cathy Ames—Kate Trask—remains one of literature’s most haunting antagonists. Her cruelty is not cartoonish, but calculated. She is a cipher of destruction, born on a Connecticut farm and shaped by shadows. Her story unfolds like a fever dream:
Cathy’s descent is relentless, but Steinbeck never flinches. He lets her live, lets her shape the lives around her, lets her meet her son Cal—who carries her darkness like a birthright. Aron, the favored child, is shattered by the truth. And Adam, the father, remains suspended in grief and denial. In a Salinas brothel, a bitter and furious Cal reveals to Aron, the favored son, that their mother (Cathy/Kate), whom Adam Trask had claimed was dead and in Heaven, is actually alive.Today’s blog may not be spectacular, but it holds something quiet and true. A cucumber by the river. A hurricane’s breath. A woman named Cathy who refuses redemption. And me, reading again, waiting for September.  Not yet ripe, not yet red. We wait in the shade, wrapped in green. Becoming. 🍇 August 20, 2025 — Peekskill, NY
Today, I took a nap and dreamt Saleem was here. Not in passing. Not as memory. He was here—with the weight and warmth of someone who never left. The room was unfamiliar, yet I knew it. Somewhere between South Carolina and California or here, but the geography bent around us like soft light. He moved through the space like he belonged to it. Lifted the golden blanket from the bed, wrapped it around his shoulders. Said nothing. Everything between us was understood. He left for the bathroom. Then I heard Uncle Gunter’s low voice echoed just beyond the door: “Be careful. Watch for ICE.” My heart stuttered, and I slipped into the bathroom to hide, convinced Saleem would follow. He did. Bare feet padding across cold tile, he joined me in that small, echoing chamber. Uncle Gunter stepped in behind him, mop in hand, No preachy words. No judgement. Just the sound of water and cloth. A kind of cleansing. A sigh of something unsaid. Then I left. Uncle Gunter followed, carrying bags of grapes. Big, juicy, dark purple grapes. They spilled slightly as he walked, like offerings, like abundance, like memory. He tasted one. Said they were sweet. I believed him. The apartment filled with flowers. For my mother. She had died again, in this dream. But it wasn’t grief—it was reverence. Women appeared in black dresses with long black sleeves, buns of hair twisted in back of their head. I thought the woman was Aunt Lue the way her eyes looked at me. Lois and Uncle Gunter reminded me that Aunt Lue had passed for many years. That same woman twisted into the face of Willie Mae, another cousin, she too passed on. Then Lois who wasn't a cousin. All gone, save Lois, not passed on, in a white dress thrumming a bass guitar— a low, steady rhythm that held the room together. Her father was a twin—Harry and Larry— nephews of Uncle Gunter, and once part of a group called The Gospel Trumpets. All of them, Uncle and the twins, the two mothers, now gone. They spoke of Uncle Gunter’s two mothers. One had been cruel. I remembered. I understood his story like my own that had been a long thorn in my side. Not out of resentment. Just circumstance. The way it was, the way it is. I found Saleem again. Pulled him from the bathroom. We left together. Then I woke up.  On a day as beautiful as today, working outside in the garden is perfect. A makeshift office—the laptop perched atop a sun-warmed table, where the courtyard becomes a haven and the world narrows to the glow of a screen and the low hum of possibility. There is a quiet beauty in this: the mobility of work, the luxury of solitude, the freedom to choose your view. A soft breeze—tinged with the faintest chill—drifts from the west, weaving its way through the trees, bending the tall weeds and grass, climbing the old stone steps, and finally winding its way into the heart of the courtyard. The soundtrack of the day is as cinematic as the mood: “Basic Instinct” plays in the background, the suite’s lush notes coiling through memory and imagination alike. There’s a sweetness to the air, but beneath it lies something more—the shimmer of danger, the allure of mystery, the soft, ever-present thrum of suspense. It’s the kind of afternoon that whispers: you can do anything. The sun, momentarily tamed and gentle, rests high above Peekskill—a friendly town where, just for a moment, it feels like everyone knows your name, knows your story, and where anonymity is a state reserved only for home. Life here finds its rhythm in the simple pleasures. At the neighborhood bar, your favorite bartender cracks a joke you almost remember: Amber Rose is dating Charlie Sheen now. She says she’d rather be “Sheen” than “Heard.” Laughter bounces around the room, infectious and inclusive, drawing in even the newest faces at the counter—strangers who, over time, become friends. Inevitably, conversation pivots to baseball. Someone mentions the Yankees, and I admit I know little—except that Derek Jeter was considered “hot,” and I loathe taking the Metro North when the Yankees or Mets play. On game days, the train transforms: suburbanites, young and loud and tipsy, pack the cars from platform to platform. There’s nowhere to sit, and the ride to 161st Street-Yankee Stadium morphs into a journey through a sea of boisterous anticipation, each car stuffed like a tin of sardines. Back in my courtyard, the afternoon light grows softer still, stories bleeding one into the other. In my mind, narrative unfurls: the plot thickens, as it always does, especially in “The Revenge of Painted People.” Chapter 18. A jealous, venomous Precious May confronts Zeno Eliot in a rain-soaked San Francisco. The murder weapon—a Luger—finally emerges. ACT 5: Hell Hath No Fury The rain had thinned to a whisper, tapping the studio windows like a dying clock. Inside, the light was low—just one lamp casting long shadows across a cluttered floor. Zeno moved with quiet precision, folding a coat, wrapping the Luger in silk—a secret not yet ready to be named. He didn’t hear her at first. She stood in the doorway, red hair damp and wild, blue jacket clinging like a second skin. Her silhouette was sharp, cinematic—like something out of a dream you wake from sweating. “You’re Zeno Eliot,” she said. Not a question. Zeno turned, slow and deliberate. “And you’re the redhead who thinks she owns him.” She stepped inside, heels clicking like punctuation. “I don’t own anyone. But I know what’s mine.” Zeno didn’t blink. “Then you’re here to take it back?” “I’m here to see what he’s given away.” The air between them was thick—rain-slicked, electric. Outside, a siren wailed. Inside, the silence was a dare. “I’ve heard things,” she said. “About you. About Abel. About what’s coming.” Zeno’s voice was quiet. “Then you know to stay out of it.” She smiled, slow and venomous. “I don’t stay out of anything. Especially when men start whispering my name like it’s a curse.” Zeno crossed the room, the scarf in his hand suddenly heavy. “You don’t know me.” “I know enough,” she said. “I know you’re planning something. I know there’s a gun in that scarf. And I know Ahab’s too stupid to see it coming.” Zeno’s jaw tightened. “You should leave.” She stepped closer. “You think you’re the only one who knows how to disappear? I’ve been vanishing since I was sixteen. But I always come back.” He looked at her then—really looked. The fury, the beauty, the danger. “What do you want?” “To decide how this ends.” She turned to go, her voice trailing like smoke. “Hell hath no fury, Zeno. Don’t forget that.” And then she was gone. This, too, is the beauty of summer in Peekskill: the seamless blend of the ordinary and the extraordinary. The sun, the breeze, the stories told and those still to be written. In moments like these, the world is wide open, and mystery, suspense, and community nestle together in the warmth of a single, fleeting day
  “Queen Ester Pearson didn’t just quote scripture—she enforced it. And somehow, that switch across the Bible became a symbol of love, order, and the kind of fear that teaches you to survive.” It wasn’t a message. It wasn’t even a word. Just iy+, typed by fingers hovering over a different laptop, not intending anything at all. But it happened. And now it belongs to the archive.
Funny how the body sometimes speaks before the mind catches up. Like a whisper from the past, or a note from the part of me that still believes in signs. iy+—I’m yours. I yield. I remember. It fits, doesn’t it? On a day when I was revisiting the blackout, Queen Ester’s switch across the Bible, the flicker of memory and fear and love. That little slip of the keyboard felt like a benediction. Like the machine was listening too. I think about how often I’ve tried to control the narrative. To shape it, refine it, revise it until it sings. But sometimes the most honest lines are the ones that arrive uninvited. Like a blackout. Like a switch. Like iy+. So I’m keeping it. Not as a mistake, but as a signature. A quiet code between me and the archive. Between me and her. Between me and the part of myself that still believes in fire and brimstone, and still hopes to survive it. The keyboard sang today. And I listened. iy+, dp++… they’re not just keystrokes. They’re echoes. Little improvisations in the symphony of memory and reflection composed since Florence, since San Francisco, since Queen Ester’s porch. It’s fitting, isn’t it? That in a past post about blackouts, the machine still found a way to speak. Not with light, but with rhythm. With the quiet music of fingers hovering, remembering Blackout first written August 30, 2018 in Florence, SC: 🕯️ BLACKOUT (Repeat Performance) Friday, August 15, 2025 Belated Heavenly Birthday: Queen Ester Jackson-Pearson (August 12, 1917) I experienced my first blackout last night in Florence, SC—the place I’m supposed to be writing, but instead I was watching The Inheritors Part I. The irony wasn’t lost on me. No one is truly prepared for a blackout. It comes like an unexpected thief in the night, just like she used to say. Queen Ester. My grandmother. My guardian. She raised us three boys in lieu of Mom, armed with Bible verses, old wives’ tales, and a switch broken fresh from the bush. Her favorite saying—“tomorrow is not promised, so do it now”—used to irritate the hell out of me. She said it like breath, like gospel. And when we didn’t listen, she had a way of making sure we remembered. She was always talking about the end of the world. Fire and brimstone. Judgment. So my middle brother and I used to plan our escape—how we’d hide together when it all came crashing down, how we’d survive the chaos she swore was coming. Funny how fear becomes memory. How memory becomes love. I thought of him last night. My second brother. And I realized: there was a time when family meant everything to me. Maybe it still does, in the quiet ways. I had flashlights, candles, and battery backup for the cellphone. I sent a silly message to SK, but I’m not a devoted mobile user. I hate the small screen, hate the glasses I need to see it, and frankly, I don’t understand the thing. Sometimes I think it’s possessed—doing things I never asked it to do. It’s a monster with its own mind. I’m old school. I miss The Edge of Night. I fell in love with the computer more than any other invention. And when it’s gone, I go a little mad. That’s something I need to work on. Something I need to get over. Because when the lights go out—when the fire and brimstone finally arrive—I want to be ready. Not just with candles and batteries, but with peace. With memory. With the kind of love that survives the blackout. Happy heavenly birthday, Queen Ester. You were the light before the outage. You still are.  San Francisco, August 2016 — Fog rolling through downtown like memory itself. Quiet, indifferent, and always returning. 🌀 CHARLES JOURNAL ENTRY Rewritten: August 26, 2016 — San Francisco San Francisco: peace and quiet, a world apart. A city so removed from the noise we forget others exist. But forgetting isn’t the same as not loving. And absence doesn’t mean indifference. I do love him—my darling boy—on the opposite side of the world. My own. My mirror. My myth. My other self that he is. Golden Gate. Bay fog. A morning of decisions: what shoes to wear? Doctor’s appointment at 11. No lilies at work—my allergies are brutal. The new girl—what is she, really? She calls herself a drag queen. I thought she was a girl. But can a woman be a drag queen? Or is she something else entirely? Her face—angular, deliberate. Three days in a row: long grey skirt, pink lipstick. A closet full of grey, maybe. A view of the cold, engaging bay. She left flowers on my desk. I arrived two hours late. They made me sick. I’m drawn to people who don’t fit. Or maybe I just don’t fit myself. What is normal, anyway? And why should I care? He’s always somewhere—on my mind. That boy in another world. The one who draws me in. There’s a chance I am him. And he is me. And after we die, there’s nothing else. Not even Marilyn Monroe. Epilogue: I believe my mother was born this day. August 26. I’ll probably call her later… much later if I remember it. Update August 14, 2025: The boy is now a man, still here...the other side of the world. I didn’t remember her birthday, was distracted in the evening. We had our issues. And now she’s gone. She wasn’t part of the fog or the bay or the quiet mornings in San Francisco. She was born in South Carolina, raised me through her absence, and left me in the care of her parents. We were never simple. But she was mine. Back then, I thought love was a question. Now I know it’s a rhythm. A pulse. A presence. The denim storefront, the foggy street, the lilies on my desk— they were all part of the climb. Part of the becoming. And now, nine years later, I look back not to rewrite, but to remember.  San Francisco, August 2016 — Denim storefront in the fog. A city selling itself while I tried to find myself. Quiet, indifferent, and always returning.  â–ˇ Mt. Sutro Steps, August 2016 — Twilight climb into silence. Three figures ascending, moonlit and unknowable. The city behind, the ocean ahead. Somewhere between forgetting and becoming.  She didn’t know the history. Not really. Just saw beauty in the bloom. But as her lens focused, I saw it differently—Australia meets Carolina, two lands, one legacy, stitched in white. And in that moment, the cotton wasn’t just soft. It was loud. Originally penned on November 22, 2022, this journal entry returns in a new light—revisited, re-remembered, and renamed. While my days are currently consumed by the emotional architecture of Painted People, this piece felt worth resurfacing. Its cotton-lined quiet still speaks, still stirs. White Reign is not a rewrite, but a reckoning—an update that threads fresh emotion through old memory, letting the past speak with a fuller voice. 📍 Williamsburg County, South Carolina It shimmered like snow—an endless field of cotton, soft and spectral, lining Highway 341 as we drifted between Hemingway and Andrews, bound for Charleston. The land was quiet, but the past was loud. My British companion, seeing cotton for the first time, was giddy with wonder. I wasn’t. I saw ghosts. I saw bent backs and blistered hands. I saw my ancestors, likely enslaved in this very soil, harvesting wealth they’d never touch. And yet, history twists. One of the richest men of the cotton age was William Ellison Jr.—a Black man, born into slavery, who became a master of the cotton gin and a slaveholder himself. By 1860, he owned 68 souls. The largest Black slaveholder in South Carolina. Ellison is my biological father’s name. A coincidence, maybe. Or maybe not. Bloodlines blur. Legacies tangle. I stepped into the field, plucked a tuft of cotton, and held it like a question. It was impossibly soft. Beautiful, even. But beauty doesn’t erase pain. Then, as if summoned by the moment, a couple from Australia pulled off the road. Strangers, drawn to the same quiet marvel. We stood together, marveling at cotton—its texture, its history, its contradictions.  In Williamsburg County, SC, he captured the cotton. It captured him.  The cotton rests beside me, soft and silent. Its bloom is innocent, but its history is not.  Tonight, Venus hangs like a secret beneath the moon—bright, insistent, and not quite reachable. The crickets are loud in the dark, the fan hums its cool breath across the room, and I am content. Not ecstatic. Not aching. Just quietly full.
There’s a kind of love that doesn’t need presence. It doesn’t ask for touch or proof. It’s like Venus—distant, luminous, and utterly real. I’ve felt it. I feel it still. And though someone else may lie beside me, it’s not the same. That love—the one of the heart, of the soul—is like loving God. It’s not about possession. It’s about recognition. I think the boy knows I’m not really here. Not all the way. He’s kind. He’s trying. He's a native New Yorker. But I’m under a different spell tonight. One cast long ago, and still shimmering in the sky. |
AuthorCHARLES PEARSON 
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