Page 36 (left).
I could feel it there in my heart like it was home..
I found myself in Flagstaff, Arizona, in April 2020. No one knew what was going to happen then. I’d driven from Southern California and only been out there for a couple of weeks. When the medical treatment for my back ended up being a washout, I left. I didn’t know where I was going, and I didn’t much care. I was still angry and in so much pain that I could hardly walk. Anger and pain can make a person's world small, and I was already half crazy. I knew I was close to the Grand Canyon, the road signs told me so, and I could feel it there in my heart like it was home. I just needed to stop somewhere first, a motel, to hold up for a while, to eat, sleep and perhaps even conjure up some pain relief. Besides, I had an engine check light on, and I could not risk traveling any further until I had it looked at.
This is where I met Ed. He approached me outside the auto shop the next day and asked me for a cigarette. I was waiting for my car and it was expected to take another hour. He was friendly and high, and he felt like talking. He told me he was staying in one of the nearby motels, which had offered quarantine to those without shelter. He was up from Phoenix and had missed his ride back. He wanted to visit his sister, whom he hadn’t seen for several years, who lived in Lenexa, Kansas, where he grew up. I told him that Lenexa, Kansas was where I injured my back and where I left a year ago on a journey I was, in fact, still on.
When my car was ready, we spent the afternoon running errands together, buying cigarettes, food, and later, opiates. My pain was one-third this and two-thirds that and the other, and the drugs immediately lifted my spirits and cleared my head enough to be able to dream again. The future, which was once obscured by sciatica and betrayal, now revealed its original shape. This brief and legitimate relapse brought with it a vision of my life where those things were not part of it, and I was thankful for the respite. Later, I dropped Ed off near a busy intersection where he liked to panhandle, and before we parted, I made this photograph of him. He said I could always find him here, especially in the afternoon. I was in Flagstaff for just over a week. I looked for Ed every day but never saw him again.
Page 37 (right).
We had to leave before the simulation began..
When I lived in Lenexa, Kansas, I made a friend who was a low-budget horror movie scream queen but worked a day job at UPS. We hung out a lot. She lived with her Doctor in a large house in a wealthy subdivision in an arrangement I could never fully understand. My friend always had to check with the Doctor before we did anything together, and then she lied about what it was we were going to be doing. Sometimes the Doctor would say yes, and sometimes the Doctor would say no. Once my friend invited me to an emergency training event at the city of Olathe’s fire department. She was there to assist the volunteers with their gory make-up applications, and I was there purely out of curiosity with my camera in hand. I don’t remember what emergency was being staged, but that morning I took photographs of a wide variety of injuries. Sadly, we had to leave before the simulation officially began, because the Doctor called and needed my friend to return home immediately, via the pharmacy, where something was always ready for her to pick up.
Altered States of Agoraphobia is available to order from Eyeshot Publishing here.