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ashby collinson

Lucky Dragons

my new life has an estimated 4,900% increase in elevator rides per month.

In August 2008 I moved from Nehalem, Oregon (pop. 203) to Chicago, Illinois on a train, Amtrak’s Empire Builder.  that vacuum sound when the doors open between cars, wandering around the Spokane station in pajama pants at 2 am, drinking Heinekin and eating stale sandwiches, knitting, writing in my notebook, falling asleep with moonlight traveling along my face, crook in my back, listening to midwesterners coming home from their summer vacations at Glacier National Park (“great scenery up there”), reading Where I Was From by Joan Didion, splashing water on my face in the aluminum sinks, crossing the Great Divide

I dreamt we set the place on fire, the huge house where I was steward, in part by birth even, with R too, & others- many friends and strangers. It was I who made the decisive action in the end. I crawled under the foundation and poured diesel fuel everywhere, and I lit a match. Only then did I decide to climb to the attic, where my corner for dwelling lay in disarray, to gather what I would take away from the fire. All the friends and strangers were doing this with me, in their tents and pallets and hammocks, interim intimacies webbing the great halls, and we had infinitely generous time for our task

Photograph taken of the screen at the Capital Theater in Olympia, Washington, during a showing of Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times, accompanied by a live orchestra playing Chaplin’s original score