Day One

"No prisoner be, where liberty himself abide with thee."
-Emily Dickinson.



early we set out from chicago, moving right across the map (before we turn down and finally left, in the correct direction), detroit's industrial wasteland in our sights. blurred across the state of michigan and arrived on the outskirts of detroit to see this man and hopefully eat his pizza:





as we entered his clustered italian/american/pop culture/everything else smorgasbord of an establishment, our gazes landed on his uncovered paunch. we were told to wait as he finished eating his orange, propped in front of an enormous television. soon, we departed on a tour of this man's life work, after being denied pizza (by the health officials of detroit). the first thing to catch my eye was...well, eyes. those of the currrent pope, rendered with love in cement. he really captured those deep set beauts. it was all too much as he rushed us around, told us about virgil and dante and caesar augustus and george bush and naples and shooting sharks off of catalina and staying in a car for three days straight outside of phoenix rendering his legs not the same thereafter. he likened melissa to helen of troy numerous times, even the virgin mary herself. paisanos! paisanos! he yelled at us as we delved deeper into italian history and american history via cement. the tour wound down, we shook his sweaty hand and departed for deeper detroit industrial wreckage (and the beauty of the humanity thereof)





the heidleberg project was created by tyree guyton in 1986. his reaction to the decay of his neighborhood was completely in tune with the healing power of color and shape. he began painting circles of many different color on the derelect houses that were everywhere. found objects were nailed up trees and onto houses and pretty soon a two street section of one of the roughest and hardest hit neighborhoods of detroit blossomed into somewhat of a healing center. we marvelled at this:

and this:

and this:

and this:

and then it was off to toronto, way too late.