Damian Priour, Austin Temple (detail) 2000 fossil limestone, glass, steel In Memory of Buddy Langston 1947-2004 Frisco, Texas
Life consists of making the decision of what you are going to do in the next split second. Nothing else exists other than the process of making that decision and executing it. Everything else is an illusion.
What if I make the wrong choice? What if I choose something that limits my future choices? What if I paint myself into a corner?
I didn’t say it was easy. I didn’t say it was a good thing. All I said is that that is all there is.
I thought that life was pain! I thought that life was suffering!
It is. Pain is choice. It is. Choice is suffering.
But if choice is all there is… and I can choose whatever I want – then I am totally free.
Choice is freedom. Total choice is total freedom. Freedom is all there is.
So I am totally free.
Yes – but if life is pain and suffering and choice is also freedom – then life is freedom.
But freedom is pain and suffering.
I was walking home from somewhere the other night – late at night. Pitch dark. There was this big field – never mind exactly where – but the important thing is that it was between where I was and where I needed to be. So I walked across it, diagonally… which is the straight line, the shortest distance between the two points – where I was and where I needed to be.
It’s odd that there is a field like this, this big, this empty, in the middle of a city. Land is expensive, after all… and there is only so much of it. But if you look closely, there are a lot more of these expanses of empty space, of ragged grass, of nothingness, than you think.
But you don’t look closely. Nobody does. There is nothing so hidden, so mysterious, as a big empty field in the middle of a city.
It is so hidden and mysterious that it feels odd to walk across it in the pitch dark. Very odd.
In the middle of the field, when I was a long way from the nearest streetlight, when the only light was provided by the half-moon overhead, I saw something where I didn’t expect something to be. There was a small but bright red light hovering in space, not too far away.
As I approached, it began to change, and then it was blue. Then it was green. Then it was red again. Interested and confused, I walked toward the little light.
It turns out there was a small, ragged tree there, all alone, separated from the rest of the world of trees. You would really never notice that tree otherwise – it wasn’t much of a tree… more like a big shrub – though of a tree shape. And somebody had put something in the tree.
There was enough moonlight for me to make it out. Someone had firmly planted a solar-powered LED lit plastic butterfly in the tree. They had attached its metal pole to a branch and left it to run. It would hide there all day, soaking up the sun, so that its constantly changing light would stream out all night.
Here… I think this is it. Not too expensive, but not free, either. They did a good job of mounting it in the tree, with some padding to protect the branch and large, thick zip ties.
Who did this? And why?
It is impossible to see this from the street. It is only by sheer accident that I walked near enough to the thing in the night to notice the light. Even in the day, you would never see the thing unless you happened to walk right next to it then look up. I have never seen anyone in that field… ever.
So it’s a little secret between me and the person that put it up. I sort of like that. Don’t tell anybody about it… OK?
I walked back during the day to take a picture of the Solar Powered LED Butterfly in the tree.
“The long triangular grooves on the car had been formed within the death of an unknown creature, its vanished identity abstracted in terms of the geometry of this vehicle. How much more mysterious would be our own deaths, and those of the famous and powerful?”
― J.G. Ballard, Crash
Time Exposure, Night, Downtown Dallas, Ross and Pearl (Click to Enlarge)
Sometimes the world is hidden in the nooks and crannies of the cable television spectrum – especially in the middle of the night.
There are these shows when some bunch of celebrity grease monkeys steal some poor victim’s car and then rebuild it – adding subwoofers that can shatter glass eardrums, lights visible from other planets, and an aquarium in the rear deck— things like that. Hopefully, they also shove in an engine that starts and brakes that stop.
At the climax – the reveal – the dupe is shown his new pimped-out chariot and he cries. He says, always, “Thank you. My life is changed.” The show ends with the impression that everything will be all right now.
I like that part. I am a sucker for redemption. I like to bask in the feeling that it is even possible that everything will be all right (although I know that it is not true).
Think about it. They are talking about a car. A hunk of metal and rubber – a capsule of steel and glass – a rolling coffin propelled by the burning ghosts of ancient jungles.
But maybe they are right. A car is freedom. A car is the ability to change your location at will. A car is sex… and a nice car is good sex.
When I was young, I went to a lake with a friend of mine and we were swimming in the green water, constantly being slightly bitten by tiny fish, and listening to some women talking to each other while they sunned on a worn wooden dock. One asked another if it was OK if she went out and had her hair cut the same way as the other. Then one asked another about her boyfriend.
“I don’t know,” she answered, “I don’t really like the guy, he doesn’t treat me that well, but he has that really nice sports car.”
“After being bombarded endlessly by road-safety propaganda it was almost a relief to find myself in an actual accident.”
― J.G. Ballard, Crash
Time Exposure, Night, Downtown Dallas, Ross and Olive
Phoenix pushed back on his chair and leaned up against the rough brick wall. He grinned and watched the woman work her way through the bar, staring at every customer, one by one. She was obviously looking for someone. He was the only person in the place by himself – and he wanted to see what happened when she reached his spot. She glanced his way a few times, and it didn’t take long for her to clear the nearest table and look down at him. He willed his face into its most relaxed, nonchalant expression – something he took pride in and had worked on for years.
“Excuse me, but I’ve arranged a meeting here with someone I’ve never seen in person… are you Brett?”
“Why, yes… yes I am. Glad to meet you.” Phoenix had not even had time to think about the lie… it simply came out. And now… nothing to do except go with it. He put on his biggest, broadest smile and reached out his hand toward the woman.
Instead of taking it, she scooted back about half a step and reached into that cavernous bag she carried.
Phoenix had enough time to think, “Oh, that’s why she has such a large purse,” but not much more as the woman’s hand flashed out with a gigantic chrome plated revolver. She raised it and Phoenix’s brain noticed how it gleamed in the uneven light of the bar. He couldn’t do anything else, though. Propped in the chair like that, he was trapped, it would take at least two or three seconds to tip forward and leap one way or the other… but he had less than one.
The gun roared as the woman kept pulling the trigger and slug after slug pumped out and into Phoenix’s chest at point-blank range.
Filming a Mexican Music Video in Klyde Warren Park.
One of the nice things about living in the big evil city is that – if you keep your eyes open – you can see a lot of interesting things.
While I was walking around downtown I crossed from the crowded west section of Klyde Warren Park over into the less-used eastern part. A small group was filming a Mexican Music Video.
It was not a big operation – a guy playing an acoustic guitar wearing sunglasses and a huge blue fake mohawk. There was a photographer with a tiny handheld camera. An assistant with a boombox on a little cart – this was cranking out a tinny version of the tune so the signer could lip-sync along. There was also a video babe in a tight spandex dress and a bright red wig.
She wasn’t in the shot when I passed by – I imagine she does some wiggling at some point.
I took the DART train downtown to a Beer Festival and made my train on time. Because of this, I was an hour early and sat down in Klyde Warren to hang out and wait until the festival opened. The sun was near setting and the sky was glowing – the skyscrapers sharp and elegant.
Looking at the collection of crystal towers, my attention was drawn toward six in particular. Thinking about why these meant something to me; I realized I had watched these (and many others) while they were built. I worked in Downtown Dallas in the early eighties – for a couple years in the Kirby Building (now converted into condominiums) and for a couple more in the historic Dallas Cotton Exchange (I loved that building – unfortunately, it was dynamited in 1994 to make room for a parking garage for the 1st Baptist Church).
The early eighties were a time of frantic building in Texas, especially in downtown Dallas. The giant construction crane was considered the state bird. This all came to a spectacular stop in the Savings and Loan crash of the late eighties – but at the time nobody could see that disaster coming.
I was young and a recent immigrant to the big city and was absolutely fascinated with watching the towers going up. In those pre-internet days detailed news was unavailable to the unwashed masses – so the construction was always a surprise to me. Since it would take, say, two years or more to build these it was like a slow-motion reveal, a mystery unveiled piece by piece, day by day.
A block would be cleared and then a gigantic hole slowly carved deep down into the chalky bedrock. Then the steel, concrete, or combination skeleton would rise, floor by floor, emerging from the scurrying crowds of hard-hatted workers like a living thing.
Finally, the skin would be hung and, only then, would the real shape and color of the building revealed. It was never really what it looked like while it as going up – the architects played with shapes and forms, adding extra corners and geometric sleights of hand. The final form was always a gigantic pleasant surprise.
Those were exciting, innocent days. Now, looking at the buildings bring back those memories. I can see, in my imagination, beyond the glass and stone cladding to the hidden skeleton of these skyscrapers, remember when the supporting framework was fresh and exposed.
Three skyscrapers from Klyde Warren Park, Dallas, Texas
The three towers to the east
The Chase Tower
2200 Ross – 1987 – I recently took photos of a helicopter making a delivery here.
People call this one the building with a hole in it. On the 40th floor is a skylobby that offers good views of the Uptown area of the city – I haven’t visited this, but would like to. I watched it get started but was working out in Garland before it was finished. The skyscraper was designed by SOM and is 738 feet tall with 55 stories, making it the 4th tallest building in Dallas.
San Jacinto Tower
2121 San Jacinto – 1982
This is the tan triple building in the center. I watched this one go up in detail. While it was being built it was not obvious that it would have that unique, triple structure – the effect was made with add-ons at the end. The building is 456 feet tall and is 33 stories, making it the 20th tallest building in Dallas.
Trammell Crow Center
2001 Ross – 1985
This one was really cool to watch. It was very close to where I worked and was clearly visible outside a window near my cube. Although I left downtown before it opened, I did see all the visible construction right in front of my eyes. The skyscraper is Post Modern in styling and is 686 feet tall with 50 stories. The Trammel Crow Center is the 6th tallest building in Dallas and is named after its principal tenant.
Three more skyscrapers from Klyde Warren Park, Dallas, Texas
To the west are three more:
Lincoln Plaza
500 N. Akard – 1984
This triangular building went up on the site of the old YMCA – I watched them implode that building. It has a cool upper-crust restaurant (Dakota’s) in the basement – you go into an elevator sticking up in the sidewalk to get down to it. Lincoln Plaza is 579 feet high with 45 stories, and is the 13th tallest building in Dallas.
These last two flank Thanksgiving Square – one of my favorite spots back in the day. It’s getting a little run-down and forgotten now – but in the early 80’s it was the place to hang out for lunch on a warm spring day.
Energy Plaza
1601 Bryan – 1983
This is another building that I watched with interest – it ended up looking a lot different than I thought. I.M. Pei & Partners designed this 49 story building located on the north side of Thanksgiving Square. On top of the tower is a triangular communications tower that is modeled after the Eiffel Tower — only smaller and three sided. Energy Plaza is the 9th tallest building in Dallas and with a height of 629 feet.
Thanksgiving Tower
1601 Elm – 1982
The rearmost of these three is Thanksgiving Tower. This was was almost finished when I started working in Dallas – I was there when it opened. This 50 story all glass skyscraper faces into Thanksgiving Square. Thanksgiving Tower is 645 feet high and is the 8th tallest building in Dallas. If you look at it you can see the the distinctive reflection of Republic Center Tower – a skyscraper that has been there since 1954 – ancient by Dallas Standards.
J.G. Ballard wrote a short story named “The Concentration City” (you can read the PDF HERE) about a city that has grown to encompass the entire universe… theoretically and practically – whether it is actually is another question.
The protagonist tries to find the edge of the city, to find “free space” – to find an area where he can build and use a flying machine, by hopping a supersonic express sleeper train and riding it west for weeks.
Unfortunately, he discovers that no matter where you go, there you are.
Here in Dallas – which is shaped sort of like a bulls-eye, with concentric rings of highways and radial connectors – all the trains run out of the center and stop. There is no endless loop. They make you get off the train at the end, before it switches track and heads back in.
Otherwise it would be tempting to get on and never exit. Ride the endless electric rails – watch the city go by, circuit after infinite circuit, the commuters come and go. Everything would slide past forever.
Maybe it’s best that you can’t do that.
(click to enlarge)
[…]
“The surgeon hesitated before opening the door. “Look,” he began to explain sympathetically, “you can’t get out of time, can you? Subjectively it’s a plastic dimension, but whatever you do to yourself you’ll never be able to stop that clock”- he pointed to the one on the desk-“or make it run backward. In exactly the same way you can’t get out of the City.”
“The analogy doesn’t hold,” M. said. He gestured at the walls around them and the lights in the streets outside. “All this was built by us. The question nobody can answer is: what was here before we built it?”
“It’s always been here,” the surgeon said. “Not these particular bricks and girders, but others before them. You accept that time has no beginning and no end. The City is as old as time and continuous with it.”
“The first bricks were laid by someone,” M. insisted. “There was the Foundation.”
“A myth. Only the scientists believe in that, and even they don’t try to make too much of it. Most of them privately admit that the Foundation Stone is nothing more than a superstition. We pay it lip service out of convenience, and because it gives us a sense of tradition. Obviously there can’t have been a first brick. If there was, how can you explain who laid it, and even more difficult, where they came from?”
“There must be free space somewhere,” M. said doggedly. “The City must have bounds.”
“Why?” the surgeon asked. “It can’t be floating in the middle of nowhere. Or is that what you’re trying to believe?”
M. sank back limply. “No”
The surgeon watched M silently for a few minutes and paced back to the desk. “This peculiar fixation of yours puzzles me. You’re caught between what the psychiatrists call paradoxical faces. I suppose you haven’t misinterpreted something you’ve heard about the Wall?”
M. looked up. “Which wall?”
The surgeon nodded to himself. “Some advanced opinion maintains that there’s a wall around the City, through which it’s impossible to penetrate. I don’t pretend to understand the theory myself. It’s far too abstract and sophisticated. Anyway I suspect they’ve confused this Wall with the bricked-up black areas you passed through on the Sleeper. I prefer the accepted view that the City stretches out in all direction without limits.””
[…]
—-The Concentration City (1957). James Graham Ballard. The Complete Short Stories
I sat around in the bus station for a while but the people depressed me so I took my suitcase and went out in the rain and began walking.
—-Charles Bukowski, Factotum
Downtown Dallas at Night, (Click to Enlarge)
Ride a city bus at night. Late at night. Look around. Really look around. Don’t read your book, don’t check your phone, don’t turn away.
Look at the people. Open your pores and let the pure atmosphere of despair and regret inside where it will knead your soul. Feel the exhaustion of going home from the night shift. Touch the grease spot on the window where people that can’t even find the energy to keep their heads upright fall. Breath in the ghosts of ancient alcohol and unwashed perspiration. Listen to the giggling and proud talk of the night denizens on their blowzy way home from a night of exhausted carousing. Feel their desperate intoxicated love.
Let yourself enter the mysterious world.
Later, maybe a week later, or a month, or years later, late at night – when you are at home on your prescription mattress and breathing that conditioned – carefully purified and modified – air wafting from ductwork overhead. When you have set your book down on the nightstand after a particularly satisfying chapter. When the glowing red digits indicate you have a good, restful, eight hours before you start mashing the snooze button. When the large, high definition, flat-screen television that you carefully positioned so that you can see it from your bed is showing the double-plays, strikeouts, and home runs from all over the country. When you begin to nod off and feel the dreams welling up….
the people on the late night buses are still there. You are home and so are they. They are still there. They are always there.
’twas in another lifetime, one of toil and blood
When blackness was a virtue and the road was full of mud
I came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form.
Come in, she said,
I’ll give you shelter from the storm.
—–Bob Dylan, Shelter From the Storm
Time Exposure, Night, Downtown Dallas, Ross and Olive (click to enlarge)
Crankcase oil drippings leave grease spots on the tarmac. The Texas summer profligate heat splits the pavement like an overripe tomato. But it’s night now and the humidity hums and settles over the earth. The browning grass still has a little green to give up.
Time smears the taillights into blood read streaks – claret smears – ephemeral neon tubes projected onto the light detector. Effects you can’t see with your eyes appear in the little screen.
And in the other lane, headlights leave a blazing aurora. Brilliant luminous lines.
These are always there – but you don’t ever notice them – hidden by time, too busy keeping things from running into each other.
“Space and time are the framework within which the mind is constrained to construct its experience of reality.”
― Immanuel Kant
But I looked at the dress on the floor and it was as if the fire had spread across the room. It was beautiful and it reminded me of something I must do. I will remember I thought. I will remember quite soon now.”
― Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea
Dallas Skyline at dusk (click to enlarge)
The time, the light right around sunrise and sunset is called the Golden Hour or the Magic Hour. In the central downtown of a big city, surrounded by the crystal canyons of mirrored glass with the actual sky only visible in an irregular sliver overhead (though reflected between the ranks of colossal ziggurat prisms) the light takes on a surreal artificial quality. For an instant at dawn and dusk the dirt of the evil city disappears, the armies of worker drones melt into the cool pavement, the honking traffic mutes.
I walk along a familiar street, the echoes of decades spent working and commuting ringing back – yet everything is suddenly fresh. The city engineering and architectonics takes the place of geology, but changes faster – compared to eternal living stone, the steel, concrete, and glass is quicksilver. I can feel the silent movement.
And there, reproduced in some mysterious modern process, is a woman in a red dress, twenty stories high, a runway model in a hat. She is an illusion in a tablet – an illusion inside a delusion wrapped in a deception – blown up into a cyclopean beauty.
Bill Chance 