Notes from a Safe House
by Douglas Milliken photo installation by Vivian Hua
individual photos: Made in a Trailer Park I remember the broken years you lived in that rumpled land submarine someone else had run aground at the park behind the drive-in. The faded green trim. The once upon a time white, a wind-buffed shade of bone. I remember how we would make up stories of all the lives given to it, lost to it, as if that dented trailer were a ship night-mangled on a reef of failed dreams, again and again, over the years before you and your mom pieced it together for your own doomed voyage, which seemed destined to leave you stranded there. I remember the way your mom rigged up that shower out back. Those three shivery buckets. The way you squealed from the cold, even in summertime. I remember the way she would rinse between double features. The glow from the giant screen filtered through the two small windows of your home, brightening her shoulders as if she did have stardust, as if she might have been a washed up, washed out, shooting star. I remember all those movies. The hollow sound of the tin roof beneath our feet as if the world might swallow us whole. The day that hail storm pinned you down for hours, as if trying to break through, trying to break you. I remember how you swore you’d get out. You’d wash your hands of that place, of that life. Here it is all these years later, someone else catching sight of you from that not quite collapsed abode. A girl, maybe, on the one-eared rocking horse you left behind, corralled in the stony yard. A mom, or dad, or aunt, maybe, looking up from a feeble kitchen chair plunked by the new water hookup, watching your massive face, that long ago ache in your eyes something you have turned to gold. No one even noticing the rotted corner of the big screen. Peeling layers of paint. All they see is the tear you have trained to run down your right cheek. As if you have channeled some part of you that never got out, that never truly got away. by Lafayette Wattles Video by Meg Willing
DAY 5 I made it! My first 20-mile day and I can barely feel my legs. A sip from the flask as a reward, but no fire tonight. It's not a busy campsite - one RV and a cook pit too close to share. Not sure if anyone is home. Protein rice over the camp stove tonight and another chapter of "Finding Me." It was the first day that felt strange without social media - and still no reception. Maybe the neighbors will want to chat. DAY 6 I decided on a rest day. My legs were like jello this morning and the weather wasn't great. Windy but no rain. Probably overnight. No one came in or out of the RV - I even knocked to ask about the cook pit. No answer so I used it anyway. Almond butter tastes better on toast. Feeling strong again and ready to hike in the morning. DAY 7 Crazy storm last night! A branch fell - missed me but not my tent. I pounded on the RV and no one answered. I let myself in. It wasn't locked and I wasn't safe outside. The RV was neatly abandoned. Someone left not long before I first arrived. The food and water, gone. Photos, journals, books, and decorations still in place. It was an intentional disappearance; an entire life left behind. Not forgotten, but gone forever. What I saw in the RV is no indication of who walked away from it all. I hope I meet her. By Sean Lukasik mixed media piece by Terry Oakden
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66 OURS - Collaborative Writing ProjectStarting with Phase 1, writers had 66 days to base their writing on 1 anonymous person & 1 vignette, dutifully and judiciously assigned to each writer by Amelia. Photos given to the writersEach writer was given a combination of 1 person + 1 vignette from the following:
Person 1
Person 2
Person 3
Vignette 1
Vignette 2
Vignette 3
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