Pink Trailers & Dune Shacks

with prompts inspired by Vievee Francis, Mary Oliver, Sarah Ruhl, Major Jackson & Danez Smith

For some time now, I’ve had this fantasy about abandoning my life & running away to live in a pink trailer in the Nevada desert. I tend to indulge in this fantasy when a period of extreme adulting is nigh and/or my heart is aching. This fantasy most likely stems from the fact that someone I was close to as a child actually DID run away to the desert & start a new life. How as I age, I have begun to understand why—how—they could have done such a thing.

But it is also inspired by Provincetown’s dune shacks.

I have been going to Provincetown, MA on and off-season since I was 18 years old. I even owned a little condo there in my 20s (kicking myself hard for not holding onto it!). It is my ultimate escape but is also always a sort of coming home to myself. There are 19 dune shacks, high in the sand dunes, which I have long been in love with.

The dunes of Provincetown, MA, at the outermost tip of Cape Cod, have a rich maritime history, acting in the late 19th century as lifesaving stations for shipwrecked sailors. Many were built in the 1920s and 30s out of shipwreck debris. But they became retreats—places of solitude for artists. Marsden Hartley, Eugene O’Neill, Norman Mailer, Jack Kerouac & Tennessee Williams are some of the writers who have spent time in the dune shacks. And now, the Peaked Hill Trust & the Provincetown Community Compact offer lotteries for artists who’d like their turn to stay in one of the dune shacks for a week.

In my fantasy, I am usually alone. Sometimes there’s a cat. Which is strange, because cats are my nemeses. Every once in a while, the love of my life is there with me. Their back turned to me, rinsing dishes as the sun streams through the window, or standing in the doorway, watching the sand shift as the sun goes down. Maybe they’re reading this, right now.

This week, we are writing about our smallness & expansiveness, our fantasies, our leaving & returning. We are writing about late-summer sadness, our desire to hold on tight to the thing, the person, the season that will ultimately be moving on. We are writing about how there is no moving on.

A little poem by Provincetown poet Mary Oliver to start us off:

I love and hate this poem so much. There is nothing more frustrating (and true) than recognizing one’s own patterns & fears, & knowing how small we are compared to the ocean, the desert, the world.

Today, paid subscribers will read poems by Sarah Ruhl, Danez Smith, Vievee Francis & Major Jackson & have access to original writing prompts to inspire new work. And you will have access to 1.5 years of my original writing prompts!

Okay! Ready to write?