"…The first time my husband left me, I took a small cabin in the woods… to enjoy a benevolent..."

“…The first time my husband left me, I took a small cabin in the woods… to enjoy a benevolent solitude. I brought one suitcase with me, photograph of myself looking serene and wistful, some drawings to hang on the wall, and my violin…I planned to go swimming every day in the stream behind the cabin, take long walks in the woods, and practice my violin. I was going to stay the whole summer. I stayed three days. During those three days I swam in the morning, practiced my violin until the noontime hour, ate lunch, and went for a walk in the woods. The walks left me hot and sweaty, so when I got back to the cabin, I heated water for a sponge bath, then made some tea. On the third day, when I came back from my walk, I was about to heat some water when the kerosene stove caught fire. I took a blanket to the flames, but they had already covered half the room. For a long while I stood there, trying to think of something to do. Then, in a flash, I realized I hadn’t a second to waste if I was to leave there alive. So I jumped through a screen, stark naked. Some farmers came along, puzzled by the sight of all this brown flesh against a backdrop of raging flames… the fire burned my hair, my clothes, my violin. Nature is beautiful that way…she leaves you with nothing to say….I came back home, bought a large flower box for the kitchen window, and began to grow herbs… it was very hot and lonely…”

- “Interiors,” Kathleen Collins
(via dorothea-rising)