memories
Blowing up mountains
From the window I can see three mountains: Hood, Adams, St. Helens. They're all quite lovely at a distance. I don't know much about them. Mt. St. Helens, of course, erupted in 1980. I was two years old, so of course don't remember it.
Kolaches!
I can't remember the first kolache I ever had. (Kolaches are a pastry, usually fruit surrounded by sweet dough. In Texas, where I would've first encountered them, however, they'd evolved, or been mutilated, into bundles of meat and cheese and sometimes eggs inside a
Traditions
Paul Thomas Anderson is possibly my favorite filmmaker. I saw Boogie Nights when I was in college, then Magnolia a couple of years later, and then backtracked to catch Sydney/Hard Eight. But while I love those early movies, the ones that mean the most to me have come much
Magnolia
When I was seven years old, my family moved from Alaska to Texas. I started the third grade a little younger than the other kids. A new school. A new town. My classmates had all been friends for years by then, having come up through all the previous years together.
Friday Harbor
For the last fifteen or so years—I honestly can't remember when it started; perhaps with a long weekend in Cambria, CA, while writing Eleanor [https://www.jasongurley.com/eleanor]?—I have taken a week off in September, then traveled somewhere alone to work on whatever project I
Wonder famous almost boys
Recently I was talking with Felicia about movies, in particular movies about writers. Movies about writers shaped my beliefs, as a younger man, about what a writing life would be like; for the last many years, I have learned to unwind those beliefs, as they don't reflect any
Alaska
My family moved to Anchorage, Alaska, when I was just two years old. Both of my parents were Texas natives who had never lived anywhere else. My father had interviewed, long distance, for a job as a programmer at an Alaskan bank, and closed the deal. They loaded all of
Dear Mrs. Gruhn
Recently I received a letter in the mail from my high school creative writing teacher, Mrs. Gruhn. We've been in touch here and there the last few years, but it's been a little while since the last time. In the letter, she hoped my writing was
Morro Bay
In 2004, I moved to California. I was twenty-five years old—it's hard to believe it's been nearly two decades since then—and I'd never lived anywhere on my own before. I don't mean having an apartment of my own; I'
Scott the Drummer
I didn't think much about drums until our family started attending a new church, back in the early '90s. Way off to one side of the stage was a Plexiglas cage, inside which was Scott. Scott the Drummer seemed impossibly cool. He was some indeterminate age. (In