After a few days, we drove out to downtown (or what�s affectionately being called �Midtown� by real-estate investors), swinging into a semi-shitty neighborhood that had its fingers on the pulse of the city. I�d been looking for Detroit on my last trip, and finally I�d followed the breadcrumbs to this place. It was all around me: the abandoned buildings from the 30�s and 40�s, 100 year old apartment buildings (like Nick�s), an entire city eating itself to survive. Underneath and beside all the decay were little scavengers like me, greedily licking up the ambience and low rent to crank out a fledgling but tangible artist community. Just across Nick�s apartment is a gallery, for instance, and its brothers and sisters are sprinkled all throughout the projects and other crannies of Cat�s Corner.

I felt the scientist in me slip into the background. Now was the time to indulge in my photography and get back into it. I was a little shaky at first in terms of what to do. Downtown around Nick�s place had some decent stuff, but at first I was just going out by myself and I didn�t have the pulse of the neighborhoods. I wasn�t sure if it�d be another Watts, y�see, where mongrel white/native boys with camera equipment get jacked the fuck up. So I stuck to the abandoned buildings and back street alleyways, sniffing out this or that morsel, snorting and snuffling around the occasional truffle I found.

I should mention here what a basic day was like. To summarize:

Wake up at around 1pm. Get up at 2-3pm. Convince Nicholas to eat someplace. Arrange for shit to be done later on, with P, Nick�s friends, or just by ourselves. Eat someplace else for dinner, either by myself or with Nick, usually at the place next to the Majesty bar and restaurant. Listen to music in Nick�s living room/kitchen, which consisted of Radiohead, Belle and Sebastian, more Belle and Sebastian (yum), The Verve, The Clash, and other some such. Go to bed at 3-4am. Lather, rinse, repeat with an energy drink in the afternoon.

It was after the first day of searching that the first problem came up. Psychological or metaphysical, it was immensely frightening.

I�d come home and Nicholas was off with his boyfriend. I didn�t mind having the place to myself at all, though. For some reason I hadn�t felt quite right since I�d scoped out and heavily surveyed this one abandoned building. It was that �being watched� feeling, but more like �being hovered around� really. I hadn�t been scared of the dark since I was fairly younger, but something had thrust fear straight into my back. There was a cold about the place I hadn�t noticed before, and some�menacing presence, something. I went to lie down to in Nick�s bed and called Sylph. Hearing her voice helped. My phone was about out of juice and I hadn�t brought my charger (or anything) to Nick�s place. It wasn�t the best idea on my part, then, to mention a worry I�d been having over the past few days. She was concerned, of course. I talked about it with her until--WONK (literally), my battery sapped out at probably the worst point it could have. I kept worrying if I�d hurt her or if I should have said anything. At least she knew my phone was low on charge.

Then that ominous feeling grew all around me. It felt like I�d brought something back from that abandoned house. I�m a semi-trained shaman (under my mother), so I am kinda used to this sort of thing. Say what you will about that or the idea I brought home a spirit or elemental, but I knew something was not at all right. It was like a dank blanket of cold misery sweeping over me, like a mist. I started to see visions of that abandoned building I�d gone near. I saw this or that dead human, stomachs distended, burst open, well into the advanced stages of decay. Their insides were a sea of bacteria and larvae, and the entity would gently push me toward them. I resisted. Urban decay interests me�and I have a curious relationship with death (you kinda have to, what with the shaman thing), but it was showing me gut-wrenchingly sickening, twisted things.

Then the nausea shifted and I saw a new scene. I could see a small black girl standing in a hallway, not past 6, wondering about the bloated shell of a mother beside her. It sickened me, and I thought I�d gone too far in indulging my interest in urban decay. This was not what I had had in mind at all. I was being pushed to the edge, made to feel like I needed to make a decision about myself. I imagined whatever it was that I�d brought with me. In my mind I created (or perhaps it created) an image of a grey human-like thing. I�d made a decision on how to deal with it. I reached into myself and tried to search out memories and people that I deeply loved. Sylph came to mind, with the new but potent bond I had with her. Other thoughts also came to mind. I sent them out to this creature, and in my mind I saw myself reaching both hands out to grip its �shoulders�. When I did this, I began to see a series of moving images. It was Detroit back in the 30�s and 40�s, around here. The streets were well kept, the buildings all in beautiful conditions, and the people seemed happy. There was a feeling of potential and grandeur, richness of being. The years passed and that feeling wilted, cracked and dried. I could see the brick rotting, the buildings become abandoned and forgotten�and suddenly I felt very sad for whatever this being was. This was what it had experienced, and I think I understood. There was one last time where I saw it, where pink bands of energy now wove their way along its �flesh�. We came to an agreement that I wouldn�t go back there and everything would be cool.

I haven�t had an experience like that in a long time, but I came out intact--and maybe a little wiser, if I can remember it.

Tune in next week�or in the next five seconds; some time between those two�

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