When you have half a second to grab what’s important to you and throw it into a bag and run out the door, it’s kind of funny to see what you actually take. There was a structure fire right next to our house; arson allegedly. The supermarket/liquor store next to our new place burnt down. After the top floor burnt away to nothing, the cops/EMS arrived on site and evacuated our building. When the flames started spreading to the trees in our yard, Ashley and I ran back into our apartment to pack a few bags, just in case. Soon after we ran back into the place, the power lines caught ablaze. In a mad frenzy of screaming neighbors and shouting cops, I filled my backpack and a duffle bag with what I thought we would need to survive if the whole place should burn. After the cops elbowed everyone to the hill in the back of our neighborhood and things started to calm down, I opened my bag to see what I had actually grabbed: a handful of socks and underwear, a picture album and my old notebooks, one other shirt, a copy of Throeau’s Walden, and a toothbrush. And in my pockets….two pbr’s! It seems I was entirely content to sit in the grass and crack a beer with the women I love, laughing at the past and watching the rest of our lives go up in flames. Sometimes, I still wish it would have actually happened.