Mall Walker

I have these moments where I think a little bump on my skin is suddenly melanoma or something. I've had a small, round, red bump on my forearm for some time. I never worried about it because it's round. After surgery, I started to obsess about it as the bump is on a part of my arm that gets a lot of sun. I finally asked Dr. "PC," my primary care doctor, who looked at it, described it as just some kind of mole and says it's nothing to be worried about.

I’ve been walking. Dr. "PC" was not happy when I told him where I've been walking. It seems that the heat is a problem if you have a questionable kidney. My family is pretty much on a summer schedule, which means that we're up until 11 PM. It's a bit daunting to get up at 5 AM to walk when it's cool.



Long story - short ... I think 15 of my last 21 miles have been in nice, air-conditioned malls, which makes me feel really, really old. At least I've got my power-walk speed back and no one is leaving me in the dust. I'd feel really bad if some 70-year-old retiree was shuffling past me!

Today I walked with the official, before-the-mall-opens, mall walkers. There were some moms that were as fast as me, but they were pushing strollers!

I’m still holding at my post-surgery weight of 134 pounds – about nineteen pounds below my weight three months ago.

The incision sites still get a little sore as the day wears on. They are slowly getting a bit better, and I am hoping soon to be wearing something other than giant underwear.

Again, more information you probably didn’t want!

Anyway, here is a walking story.

Last Wednesday, I made this image of a phone booth in disrepair.

The shot wasn’t made at a mall. I’ve been interested in pay phones as they are disappearing from the landscape. I found this subject as I walked north on South 7th Avenue, which for those of you who don't know Phoenix, is an economically challenged part of town.

Just before I stopped to make this image, I had observed a guy, who was also walking north well ahead of me, suddenly turn around and start to walk toward me. When I stopped at the phone booth, I noticed there were another man approaching, this one from the south. The phone booth, where I was standing, was right where these two guys were going to meet.

Although I had briefly looked through my camera at my subject, I stepped back to wait for them to pass while resting my camera in my left hand, near my shoulder. I waited, and I suppose the idea crossed my mind that waiting was a bad idea.

I could now see the guy coming from the north was in his early thirties, well cut, tattooed, with dark glasses and a white T-shirt. The man coming from the south came closer. He was very skinny.

Then I could see that he was perhaps my age or a few years older.

His age put me at ease.

As they approached, I looked at the skinny dude, said, “Good morning.”

He said “Hey.”

The southbound guy walked past. He could see that I wasn’t looking at him.

The skinny man said something I didn’t hear. I said, “What?”

“Is that a bird under your arm?”

I lifted my arm and my ratty old water bottle belt was there. “No, it’s this.”

“Oh.”

He turned to walk away.

I stepped up to try to square up the frame on the phone booth while trying to avoid my shadow. I wondered if I had heard his question correctly.

The phone booth contains broken technology and graffiti. The damage signifies telecommunication’s transitory state as well as the failure of communication, in general. In its stylized text, the graffiti suggests codified marks, which speak to a kind of mystery. The words themselves appear to be proper nouns. That suggests a sort of tribal marking, or at the very least, the mark-maker's statement that I am here.