After a month or so I could read them all, in one go, without crying, throwing up or shivering. The content of the letters started to feel separate from me. I began to notice different words and phrases as I became less physically affected by the letters. I became less focused on obvious threats and bloody descriptions. I began to skip over the passages detailing sexually violent fantasies. Instead, I was drawn to a hitherto hidden narrative, populated by objects and characters that seemed to be of value to him, and to have a meaning that I could not easily discern. I used search engines to ‹associatively› connect these words and phrases to images. I wondered if doing this would help me to understand his world. If I understood, I reasoned, then should he succeed in capturing me, I might be able to reason with him, on his terms. I would have a better chance of escaping. Once again, I used the letters as a model of the inner world of someone with psychosis, the written descriptions as representations, or models, of his world-view. As there were usually only words I was interested to see what actual images might be associated with them.

The process of making the photo text works:

1. Read the transcriptions of the letters sent 2000-2001.

2. Select key words or phrases.

3. Enter the words or phrases into google image search.

4. Download images from the search.

5. Select one image from each collection of downloaded files.

6. Use google to search for an object identical, or as close as possible, to that shown in the downloaded image that can be purchased online.

7. Buy the objects.

8. Document the objects at high resolution.

The prints, Taking Your Hand, were made as I designed and used a font based on my stalker’s handwriting. I limited myself to only writing about the experience of using the font.