Midwestern abandonment + reflections on escapism
A book of travel photography and diary entries exploring the hidden corners of rural midwestern towns. Abandoned relics whisper their emotional histories. Everywhere Else is their record.
Printed 2019
Being lost is losing yourself.
Losing yourself is transformation—
surrendering where you once sat complacent, and inhabiting yourself with the unknown destination.
Plunge into the uncharted in any direction you please;
leave your starting point long behind.
Being alive is setting up home in all the space between birth and the great unknown. Living is to always be lost. Arriving is the end.
Everywhere Else
is what you must leave to find.
It is a distinctly separate state of mind.
Being there is being lost,
and feeling more alive because of it.
Everywhere Else is an escapist’s haven:
built on belief that things would be different
if you changed your location—
that whatever burdened you at home
would cease to exist if you left it behind.
Everywhere else is anywhere that is not here,
and it’s the only place I want to be,
no matter where I am.
Everywhere else is everything.
The more one realizes she is surrounded by it,
the less she can find a distinction between
where she ends and where it begins.
What was once my construct of everywhere else
is being dismantled as I am absorbed by it.
The eye looking for nothing sees everything.
The heart longing for nothing feels everything.
The mind fixated on nothing is delighted by everything.
Where there is no wall between the self and the infinite,
the extraordinary appears in everything ordinary.
We live to stay alive.
Beauty is our reason and reward.