Familiar faces out in the middle of nowhere..

Altered States of Agoraphobia. 

Page 24 – (Bridge)

These pictures were taken at the Jesus Nazareno Cemetery in Taos, New Mexico, at the final resting place of Dennis Hopper, about a month after I arrived in Lenexa, Kansas, at the end of April 2018. My friends Don and Gene Hudson picked me up on their way through, driving down from Michigan. They were on their annual trip to visit family and friends that they had out there and Lenexa, Kansas was going to be on their way. It was not unusual for us to rendezvous like this and over the years we have met up several times on the road, close to wherever both of our paths were going to be crossing and it was always good to see their friendly and familiar faces out there in the middle of nowhere. It had been about a year since I last saw them and I was looking forward to catching up. I was still shell shocked from my recent experiences in south Missouri and the idea of joining them on a road trip was a good one. That rolling mosaic of distraction and focus that only a long car journey with a camera can bring was going to be the perfect medicine for my restless spirit. I was far away from myself in every way I could think of, but knew I’d be safe in the company of those I considered to be family and the soundtrack was guaranteed to be fantastic..

Note: Facing the above photographs, if you now look over your right shoulder you’ll see the grave of Dennis Hopper and below is a picture I took of Don taking a photo of it. The photo he took is on the left.

Truth based fictions. Part 2.

 Jumpsuits and shoulder flags..

The 2nd poster that hung on my childhood bedroom wall was of the Apollo 11 Command Module floating in the Pacific ocean after returning to Earth from the Moon (below left). The 3 astronauts standing outside awaiting rescue in their jumpsuits and shoulder flags looking out at me in permanent out of focus bewilderment. (The Earthrise hung in our bathroom). This poster was pinned up high on the wall at the end of my bed and it was one of the first things I saw in the morning when I was waking up. Writing about this now has just sent me on a Google search looking for it, being curious to compare it to my recollections before I continue. In doing so I realize my memory of this image has been spliced with the memory of another image from that time. Namely the splashdown of the starship Icarus at the beginning of the 1968 movie Planet of the Apes, when the 3 surviving astronauts paddle for shore in an inflatable dinghy (below right). I suppose it does not take a giant leap of the imagination to connect these two and the movie does use imagery reminiscent of those earlier space missions. I was an avid fan of Planet of the Apes as a kid and it was hard to avoid with 5 movies followed by a TV show and an excellent comic book all released in as many years (and equal to my entire life then). With all this mixed in with NASA's ongoing real life space program, my imagination was on a fertile ground to launch me on my own fantastic internal voyages. It was a place where science fiction and science fact fused and I understand why my memory did the same thing by splicing them together this way. Both this movie and the moon landing occurred within a year of my birth and were imprinted upon my awakening consciousness as recent cultural events in what was then, a pre Star Wars universe.

Truth based fictions. Part 1.

It is only the lean of time upon it..

In 1976 when I was 6 years old I had 3 posters on my bedroom wall that my mother had put up to keep me company and I suppose to also make me ponder. One was a painting of a cocktail party where all the guests had guns for heads. Every guest had a different gun identity and each hand held a different drink. When I was laying on my bed this poster was pinned on the wall directly to my right and I could touch it when I reached out. At my tender age I didn’t know anything about guns or drinks, but its message was clear to me. By associating a thing with a person and a person with a thing everyone is a potential killer no matter what drink they happen to be holding, or thereabouts anyways. I’ve searched for this image online several times over the years, but strangely I am still yet to find it. The screenshot above is the result of my latest search. Sometimes I think I might have simply imagined it and it is possible that I have somehow. Gaslighted by my own psyche. It is one of the first memories I have of looking at an image, but I also know that remembering doesn’t necessarily make it true or real and it is only the lean of time upon it that has made it so.

Like an alien artifact that time has turned up..

 

When we look at a photograph in front of us it is already fully formed and ready for connection. This initial comprehension of an image happens in approximately the same fraction of a second that it takes to make the original exposure. A photograph always stands in stark contrast to our own present world where it is being viewed, like an alien artifact that time has turned up before us. We have no control over an images impact upon us because images bypass all conscious firewalls and find their place inside us, connecting to what is already waiting to receive them. The image's innate ability to make us believe them is powerful because we want to believe them and when we do believe them we declare them as a personal truth, even if that truth is noticing its deception.. 

Altered States of Agoraphobia is available to order here 

His eyes were wide and black with fear..

Altered States of Agoraphobia. 

Page's 26, 38, 56. 

 

 

Bob died in Feb 2020 of congestive heart failure. I personally think he was an early U.S. Covid case too, although his girlfriend will argue with me about this. He’s gone now and it is an episode in my life I have found difficult to process and fully move on from. When I first visited Bob in the hospital, which turned out not to be the hospital at all, but instead some sort of independently run budget pulmonary unit located within the actual hospital but not in any way connected to it. A bit like a pretzel stand in a shopping mall. I found him there with his hands and feet tied to the bed frame with grubby bandages that were stretched so thin and tight that they looked like they were cutting off his circulation. The staff told us he had been restrained because the medications they had administered to sedate him were causing him to be confused and he had become combative and belligerent with them. 

Bob did look like he was having terrible visions too and when he was awake his eyes were wide and black with fear as he tried to rip the tubes and hoses out of his body so he could escape. The staff had decided Bob was not going anywhere, not in this life anyway and their solution was to tie him down and pump him full of more of the same drugs which had triggered this response in the first place. They wanted to go ahead and prepare him for a hospice I am not sure he was ready for. I could see on their faces that they were sick of the sight of him and they were counting down the hours until his bed would become free again. He was laying there unwashed with his bedding unchanged and he was soaked in his own urine. This shocking neglect went on for several days until one day we arrived and found him unconscious and breathing on a ventilator and everything in the room was suddenly clean and quiet with the curtains drawn against the day. We were told he caught a high fever and his breathing had stopped and it was possible he had now sustained some brain damage, but we would not know to what extent until he woke up. When his girlfriend of 20 years started to really lose it over this, the staff threatened to call security and have her removed from the facility and then they debated whether she should be allowed to visit him again, seeing as they weren't married and therefore legally she was not his next of kin. Bob had no-one in the world but her and when he passed away a couple of days later, I was relieved to hear she was with him at his bedside.

Altered States of Agoraphobia is available to order here