JoAnne
A Conversation with a Houseless Woman at Laurelhurst Park
Every afternoon, my dog and I walk to Laurelhurst Park in Portland, Oregon. The historic park, built in accordance with the Olmsted Plan, is full of Cedars, Roses, Douglas-firs, a giant dog park, a lake full of ducks, and plenty trails to wander around, and grass fields to lay in. It is one of my favorite spots in the entire city. It is no wonder a community of houseless Portlanders return here, despite the constant sweeps enforced by the Portland Police Bureau. It is here, today, that I met JoAnne for the second time.
The first time JoAnne and I crossed paths was pretty awkward. I’m a street photographer. I pull my phone out every 5 seconds to snap a pic of something that looks interesting. I imagine anyone pulling their phone out to take a photo or video appears pretty sus these days. But I do it anyways. I just don’t really give a fuck. But sometimes I need a wakeup call. JoAnne confronted me while I was recording her one day.
“Are you recording me?” she asked. “Nah,” I lied. “Good because if you were I’d break it.”
Since that first interaction, I’ve had to rethink the ethics behind street photography. Street photography is something I’ve been doing since my first camera phone, but it wasn’t until last year that I began taking it seriously. I began taking more risk. I take photos and video of the houseless, trying to capture a glimpse into their lives. People I walk past every day, the undesirables, the lonely, the wandering sort of which not all or lost, but many are…too many. And they say the photograph says something about the photographer, but I digress.
JoAnne and I crossed paths again today. I don’t know if it was out of respect or shame that I put my phone away. I think I just wanted to reassure her that I wasn’t trying for problems. As we pass, she says to me…well I don’t know what she said but it was something about my dog. “What did you say?” I asked her, taking my earbuds out. I expected some sort of confrontation. I confess I can be a hot head. Anyone can get these hands. But that’s not what happened. Instead, we talked. Or she talked and I listened. And the conversation was by no means coherent, but it was sincere. I didn’t have to condescend her, as most of us do with people experiencing some form of delusion or psychosis, whether she was schizophrenic or simply under several layers of juxtaposing forms of trauma and delirium or drug-induced madness, who can say for sure…the how…or the why?…but what JoAnne relayed to me was truly heartbreaking and honestly horrifying. She leaned over her shopping cart and began exposing me to her inner world, painting a picture of the world around her that any photograph might tell you…if only they could.
JoAnne has lived in Portland since 1987. She told me she came to Laurelhurst Park because she thinks it's where she conceived her son. She says she has been forced by gunpoint to eat human shit. She once watched a guy get shot by the playground and nobody even flinched. She believes there is a changeling that keeps transforming into different people and nearly everyone she meets is that same person, constantly taking new forms. He shoots beams of light and one time the beam of light hit two trees and shot directly into her head. She says a beam of light once shot under her and sawed her in half and now she can’t find her body. She says everyone has multiple doppelgangers around the city. My doppelganger, she told me, was a girl named Miranda who lives in the houseless camp on SE Oak Street. Miranda told her that she used to be chained up with 50 other women in someone’s basement. She told me everything is connected. A sort of plot, where every moment and every experience is all apart of a grand conspiracy. She knows this. It is exactly what the man contacting her through an earpiece lodged deep in her ear has been trying to tell her. She tried to tell the Sheriff about it, but he didn’t believe her. And she doesn’t understand why the Sheriff let her go. Now, she doesn’t feel safe.
For JoAnne, danger and violence lurks around every corner. In the trees, she tells me. They are even in the trees…all of them. There is some nefarious ‘other’ constantly stalking and harassing and watching her every move. Then she asked me for 20 cents. I had no money, but I told her to catch me next time she sees me and we will talk and if I have some money I’ll help her out.
I turn and walk into the park. It is a beautiful day, but simultaneously there is a darkness that permeates everything. As I walk past other peoples and pets, friends and families having a picnic, a picturesque Portland in the spring with the warm sun kissing my face and the sweet smell of the red-flowered currants, roses, and cedar; I’m still trying to come off the horror mystique of JoAnne’s schizoid reality. The mind-numbing world within worlds that is Being and Time as for the moment her world bleeds into mine. The world where ‘they’ are always watching, always plotting, a dark unseen force lurking in the shadows. And just who are ‘they’? “I don’t know, They, They, the ominous They!”
While JoAnne is obviously not of sound mind, the fear and paranoia she’s experiencing comes from a lived experience. A dark force, like a virus, spreading, multiplying, a ghost or thought or monster that haunts, an unshakable fear, constantly changing form, seeded deep in our mind, but then again…we also have warm bed, we have doors that lock, we have some sense of safety and sense of place, food, water, etc. JoAnne wanders the street nearly invisible to others, stuck, alone with her thoughts and constantly having to watch her back for dangers both unreal and real. JoAnne isn’t assured there is a safe place to sleep tonight, she doesn’t have the luxury of privacy, and she doesn’t feel safe (not even in her own mind).
I used to do a lot of acid and other psychotropic drugs. I’m also someone who has always been prone to paranoia. Nearly every trip was to some degree of “bad trip” but a nice friendly moment could always snap me out of it. What I’m trying to say is that while a lot of things about society are total bullshit, common decency isn’t one of them. And people like JoAnne deserve some common decency. And it may cause someone else’s visions of Gehena to bleed into your lovely daydream, but just like JoAnne’s nightmare…its only in your head. Both the nightmare and the dream.
