Cathedrals
By Dimitri Karakostas
Discordia does not, it turns out, hate everything. Every other week, we share a piece of new or gently-used work from an artist who's earned our respect.
There is art that moves us, and there is art that moves alongside us. This is Fellow Travellers.
Cathedrals
Lord, there is so much empty space—and me, weary traveller, in search of a gas station washroom. Window open, heat blasting on cold feet. Dogs run along the roadside—two kids following far behind, laughing: it's all okay. One sign says "Appalachian Range Route," another smaller sign declares that these mountains are 480,000,000 years old.
I've been here before; no, not exactly here but an approximate here. I've seen similar signs in different states, all offering different ages of this cluster of mountains. I, myself, would have first seen these signs about fifteen years ago: an approximate here at an approximate time.
You can pack a lot of fantasy in an overnight bag.
Fantasy is the correct word here. The sterile definition is close to an 'unrealistic or improbable response to psychological need.'
In this fantasy, I find whatever it is that I'm looking for. Later, I come to discover that other people are looking for it, too.
This would buy me some time.
I'm just over 1,800 kilometers in three days, which would push this particular roadtrip well over 10,000 kilometers. I've been doing loops. Up one way, down another. Driving all hours of available daylight as my headlights aren't working anymore: I discovered this on a drive to Amherst, Massachusetts. I drove real slow and said my prayers, live to tell you the uneventful story.
Today I am conducting a perimeter search around the New Brunswick border. I am staying in hotels paid for by the federal government. My mission remains unclear, but I'll know it when I see it.
I misled someone, perhaps several someones, to bring me here, this nowhere, on the edge of a field, staring at a barn, a disused barn, in wintertime, through a windshield. There must be a reason that I pulled over.
This barn exists at the same time as I do: here it is, right in front of my eyes. Maybe that's enough of a reason. A democratic understanding of the world around me. However—what is the reason for the photograph itself? Snap. Snap.
I've made a mistake in trying to do this in the winter: snowy roads, desolate landscapes. All the images carry the same meaning. Grey-blue-brown.
This is a hindrance to the payday I had in mind.
A car develops in my side view mirror. Paranoia kicks in. I'm going to be run out of town by the locals who think i'm some hippy looking to squat in their abandoned buildings. I peel out, fishtailing in the slush. I'm not looking for a confrontation. I have one rule on this trip: don't do anything illegal—beyond the distracted driving, I mean. I'm permitted one illegal thing on this trip. No trespassing, vandalism, speeding: blend in, be nothing. Nothing worth looking back at.
Music stops. Phone says SOS: a dramatic way to say that I have no service. I flip through FM radio stations, more than a feeling when I hear that old song they used to play. Reception improves at the top of the hill, garbles out again at the bottom.
Doctor A says I have no memory from CTE, from concussions. Doctor B says I have no memory from PTSD, from bad things happening all around me. I don't want to ask what Doctor C thinks. This is why I'm out here. I'm trying to jog my memory, hoping something will click.
Or that's what I said on paper, at least.
My favorite CIA guy, James Jesus Angleton, talked about the importance of all information: no detail is too small when it comes to gathering intelligence. It helps form a complete picture on a subject.
In a different timeline, I'd have made a great federal agent whose paranoia culminates in national disgrace.
In this timeline, I'm just getting old. I'm finally smart enough to know that I'm on a fool's errand. I will never find redemption in my work. I will leave a series of Rubbermade containers filled with negatives and prints for my son, which he'll lug around out of guilt until, eventually, they get misplaced. And then what?
Well, for right now there's a good looking motel coming up on my right. Cracked glass and fluorescent lights that haven't been turned on in a long time. I pull off the highway—there are cathedrals everywhere for those with eyes to see.1
Memory Fog, a book of photographs from this particular amnesiac wandering, comes out on March 1, 2025.
DIMITRI KARAKOSTAS was abandoned by his family and forced into the artist sweatshops at a young age. He now is retired, living in Honduras with his beautiful young wife and their angry bull terrier. 
Interested in being a Fellow Traveller? Email your poetry, prose, visual art, etc. to discordia.sucks@gmail.com. We pay (not much), and pieces are collected a few times a year in a small print edition.
Written by voice-to-text on highway 17, edited in a Ramada parking lot.
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