“Jazz is the music of the body. The breath comes through brass. It is the body’s breath, and the strings’ wails and moans are echoes of the body’s music. It is the body’s vibrations which ripple from the fingers. And the mystery of the withheld theme, known to jazz musicians alone, is like the mystery of our secret life. We give to others only peripheral improvisations.”
― Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 5: 1947-1955
Dallas Museum of Art
Dallas, Texas
“In their faces–plenty of them were handsome, but ruined–I’ve seen the remnants of who they almost succeeded in being but failed to be, before becoming themselves.”
― Richard Ford, Canada
Deep Ellum Art Park
Dallas, Texas
“Limitless undying love which shines around me like a million suns it calls me on and on across the universe.”
― John Lennon
Trinity River Bottoms
Dallas, Texas
“I’ve been making a list of the things they don’t teach you at school. They don’t teach you how to love somebody. They don’t teach you how to be famous. They don’t teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don’t teach you how to walk away from someone you don’t love any longer. They don’t teach you how to know what’s going on in someone else’s mind. They don’t teach you what to say to someone who’s dying. They don’t teach you anything worth knowing.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones
Northpark
Dallas, Texas
“Manifest plainness,
Embrace simplicity,
Reduce selfishness,
Have few desires.”
― Lao Tzu
“The challenge lies in knowing how to bring this sort of day to a close. His mind has been wound to a pitch of concentration by the interactions of the office. Now there are only silence and the flashing of the unset clock on the microwave. He feels as if he had been playing a computer game which remorselessly tested his reflexes, only to have its plug suddenly pulled from the wall. He is impatient and restless, but simultaneously exhausted and fragile. He is in no state to engage with anything significant. It is of course impossible to read, for a sincere book would demand not only time, but also a clear emotional lawn around the text in which associations and anxieties could emerge and be disentangled. He will perhaps only ever do one thing well in his life.
For this particular combination of tiredness and nervous energy, the sole workable solution is wine. Office civilisation could not be feasible without the hard take-offs and landings effected by coffee and alcohol.”
― Alain de Botton, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work
Deep Ellum Art Park
Dallas, Texas
“I’ve dreamed a lot. I’m tired now from dreaming but not tired of dreaming. No one tires of dreaming, because to dream is to forget, and forgetting does not weigh on us, it is a dreamless sleep throughout which we remain awake. In dreams I have achieved everything.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet
Photograph taken from the Galatyn Park DART Station
Richardson, Texas
“There must be some kind of internal time distortion effect in here, because when I look at myself in the little mirror above my sink, what I see is my father’s face, my face turning into his. I am beginning to feel how the man looked, especially how he looked on those nights he came home so tired he couldn’t even make it through dinner without nodding off, sitting there with his bowl of soup cooling in front of him, a rich pork-and-winter-melon-saturated broth that, moment by moment, was losing – or giving up – its tiny quantum of heat into the vast average temperature of the universe.”
― Charles Yu, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
A while back, I posted a photo of a bronze fly on one of the sculptures in Pioneer Plaza – a little detail that has always held an odd fascination for me.
Today, waiting for a train at the downtown Plano DART station I took a look at a cool little horse sculpture – sort of a steampunk steed. I was impressed to find that it too was being harassed by flies – two of them, as a matter of fact.
The sculpture, by Tom Askman, is named Iron Horse, in honor of the historical trains that have plied the spot. So I guess these two are Iron Flies.
Well, except that the sculpture, although it is called “Iron Horse” – is actually made of cast bronze. So I guess there are still bronze flies.
Iron Horse, by Tom Askman
Plano, Texas
Iron Horse, by Tom Askman
Plano, Texas
Iron Horse, by Tom Askman
Plano, Texas
Iron Horse, by Tom Askman
Plano, Texas
“since some people had told me that I was ugly, I always preferred shade to the sun, darkness to light”
― Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye
Shade structures on the Continental Avenue Bridge Park, Trinity River Bottoms
Dallas, Texas
Continental Bridge,
Dallas, Texas
My Xootr folding bicycle, Trinity River Bottoms, Dallas, Texas
“They heard somewhere in that tenantless night a bell that tolled and ceased where no bell was and they rode out on the round dais of the earth which alone was dark and no light to it and which carried their figures and bore them up into the swarming stars so that they rode not under but among them and they rode at once jaunty and circumspect, like thieves newly loosed in that dark electric, like young thieves in a glowing orchard, loosely jacketed against the cold and ten thousand worlds for the choosing.”
― Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses
Pioneer Plaza
Dallas, Texas
Dallas, Texas
Bill Chance 