4/25/05

Awoke: Tempe, AZ
Speedo: 63404
Miles: 0

The sun is up. I am up. I get up and put on the same thing I had on yesterday and get my car keys and say goodbye to Jake and I am gone. In my mind, I am already out of Phoenix. I-17 is clogged, but open. The drive out is tedious because the roads are highly trafficked. I stop one last time. I get ice for the cooler and top off my tank. Rock and fucking roll. I put on a CD I made for today and the first song is “Persephone” from the Cocteau Twins. Makes me feel pumped. I get onto Loop 202 West and merge onto I-10. I am starting to feel distant and despondent. I see the Exit for I-17. Fuck, that’s it. I get on it, heading north. I pass roads I know. Exits I’ll see for the last time. I know what all this stuff is and where these roads go and I’m going to excurse roads I’ve never been on in places I’ve never been before.

I-17 is a dangerous road, and it’s already windy enough and presently it starts to rain. It’s starting to rain and I’m getting further from Phoenix. I am already so far away, in ways. This Jewel song comes on –“Standing Still”- and it’s about being in strange towns and driving alone and Loving. I feel so alone and already so far away. Then I look at the land. This beautiful land in rural Arizona cut up for a highway and I can visibly see where the mountains have been leveled and tunneled.

I make a deal. Who with, I don’t know. The earth or the universe or the Land or America. All of them. I promise to really respect this place and now I’m starting to tear up in my eyes. I promise I won’t hurt it and I want to walk on it and take energy from it and I want to leave my energy behind and have that be alright. I say I am so sorry that somebody decided to cut it up for an interstate, but I understand why it’s there and I’m glad it’s there so I can be here now. And I ask it all to care of me. And not let me fall and be unrescued or attacked by a mountain lion or coyote or bitten by a snake. And that I really want to see the Land for what it is. To help me see that. And I want it to really see me and what I’m made of and what kind of person I’ve been up to now, rip me up and show me what kind of man I’ll be. I know it sounds totally New Age-y, these thoughts, but I was so alone. I didn’t have anyone. And the Land I wanted to photograph would be my only company for however long this was going to take.

By the time I make this deal, I am violently crying. My shoulders are shaking. I know I’m going to be OK. And that makes me feel good. But by doing this, I’ve agreed to be alone, without touch, for the duration of this trip.

More being alone. But I will learn to be quiet and silent and that’s a whole language unto itself, one I’ll pick up soon and am already feeling. My face is red and my capillaries are showing and broken. My eyes are turgid and making more salt and the irises of my eyes are throbbing into blue. It’s still raining. I get a little closer than I want to be to a truck with a trailer in front of me. I need to focus on this because I want to live. I really, more than anything, want to live. So I tell myself to dry it up and it says Sedona is only thirty-something more miles. I didn’t even know I was getting so close. I tried to look at all the mountain views when the turns would allow and thought about my Deal and then I sang loud and strong. I played the shit out of Tori’s “The Beekeeper” album on this trip, because it was new and I was integrating it, and this day I would listen to it all the way through for the first time of many. But now I exit and turn it down because I’m getting into Town.

Sedona. It was still early in the day, maybe two o’clock. I followed some signs into Red Rock Country and parked. I got out when it was starting to look very beautiful and got my cameras and put some water and sunflower seeds in my backpack and got right out on a trail.

I walked around for several hours, this all being so new. And it was so cool and grassy and red in Sedona. I photographed everything that looked most pure and ate my seeds and sat down on a big rock and stayed calm for a while. Then sang songs I didn’t know and headed back to the car when the sun started going down and the sky emptied itself of color. I had a small dinner of dried fruit, nuts, a granola bar, and water. Then I went into the touristy part of town, started to look for empty lots. I found one and it was dark and I parked and tried to go about Falling Asleep. I took out my contacts and washed my face with a cloth and got my pillows situated.

Lying there, in my car in a parking lot in Sedona, Arizona, trying to fall asleep, my mind is still so active. I’m nervous and scared and lay there for two hours with nothing but racing thoughts about how I can’t fall asleep and jerking up every time I see headlights pass. But after a while, my body starts to get tired and I start to care less about the headlights and know I’ll be OK, that no one will think anything of my being there and tell myself to stop being paranoid. My windows are nice and foggy and I’m just getting laconic and flatlined. What the fuck. There is seriously a cop car outside and a cop knocking on my window. So I open the door and ask if I’m in trouble and they say no, we know you need to sleep, but you should do it at the grocery store down the street, not here, and they’re twenty-four hours. I ask how to get there. I say thanks and they say you’re tag’s expired and to drive with caution because we could give you a ticket for that. Shit. Alright. I drive down to the grocery store. I see cops circling around my car again. Different ones. How many cops does Sedona have patrolling on a random night? Fuck this place. I was gonna get up and hike here again, but I get back on the interstate and get off when I see a little hotel and it’s below freezing now in the high desert and I just want to sleep.

I park in the corner, pee on the side of the building, and then try to fog my windows up again. My body heat permeates the blankets. When warmth occurs, I fall asleep.

Route: I-17N to 179N

Sedona, Arizona 4-25-05