All Is Sweetness And Delicacy And Harmony

“A sandwich and a cup of coffee, and then off to violin-land, where all is sweetness and delicacy and harmony.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

fiddle

I visited the Frisco Heritage Center during one of their open house events and stumbled across a fiddle player in the Lebanon Baptist Church. She explained that she played three styles of fiddle: Texas Style, Bluegrass, and Old-Timey. Then she would world her way through examples of each. She was very good and the atmosphere in the beautifully-restored old church was special – I really enjoyed listening to her play.

The Nights Will Flame With Fire

“If you’re going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don’t even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery–isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you’ll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you’re going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It’s the only good fight there is.”
― Charles Bukowski, Factotum

Frisco Heritage Center, Frisco, Texas

Frisco Heritage Center, Frisco, Texas

To Enlist the Confidences Of Madmen

“I believe in the power of the imagination to remake the world, to release the truth within us, to hold back the night, to transcend death, to charm motorways, to ingratiate ourselves with birds, to enlist the confidences of madmen.”
― J.G. Ballard

The Horseshoe, Under Construction, Dallas,  Texas

The Horseshoe, Under Construction, Dallas, Texas

One Of These Malenky Machines

“Youth is only being in a way like it might be an animal. No, it is not just like being an animal so much as being like one of these malenky toys you viddy being sold in the streets, like little chellovecks made out of tin and with a spring inside and then a winding handle on the outside and you wind it up grrr grrr grrr and off it itties, like walking, O my brothers. But it itties in a straight line and bangs straight into things bang bang and it cannot help what it is doing. Being young is like being like one of these malenky machines.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

disc

Forget What You Want To Remember

“Just remember that the things you put into your head are there forever, he said. You might want to think about that.
You forget some things, dont you?
Yes. You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Tom Wesselmann  Mouth # 11, 1967 Dallas Museum of Art

Tom Wesselmann
Mouth # 11, 1967
Dallas Museum of Art

I have always loved this piece of modern art in the DMA. I remember it from when I first moved here thirty four years ago. I worked downtown and would walk over to the museum at lunch and look at this (and other, of course) work of art to help make the day bearable.

Those were the olden days, ancient history, when you could take a lunch and get a needed break – unlike today where lunch is something you gobble at your desk while answering emails.

There was this cool little gift shop across the street from my office – in the old building that has since been converted into the Joule hotel. They had a postcard of this painting. I bought it, no reason, I simply wanted to own the image so I could look at it whenever I wanted. The young redhaired shopgirl asked me as she slid the card into a thin paper bag, “Do you know where this is?”

“Of course,” I said. “I go over at lunch and stare at it.”

I have no idea what she thought of that. She didn’t say anything.

Fade Surprisingly Quickly

“Memories, even your most precious ones, fade surprisingly quickly. But I don’t go along with that. The memories I value most, I don’t ever see them fading.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

Mural, Fair Park Dallas, Texas

Mural, Fair Park
Dallas, Texas

I have always loved the Art Deco Murals along the Esplanade in Fair Park. I think they are among the many unappreciated public artworks in the city. The ones along the southern side have been beautifully restored.

However, the murals on the North Side – exposed to the southern sun – are very faded and in need of loving care (and very hard to photograph). I hope they get some, they are just as gorgeous as the others.

Mural, Fair Park Dallas, Texas

Mural, Fair Park
Dallas, Texas

All Things Were Older Than Man

“Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Design District Dallas, Texas

Design District
Dallas, Texas

Teach Him What He Does Not Want To Learn

“A responsible Warrior is not someone who takes the weight of the world on his shoulders, but someone who has learned to deal with the challenges of the moment.”
― Paulo Coelho, Warrior of the Light

Design District Dallas, Texas

Design District
Dallas, Texas

“The Warrior knows that no man is an island.
He cannot fight alone; whatever his plan, he depends on other people. He needs to discuss his strategy, to ask for help, and, in moments of relaxation, to have someone with whom he can sit by the fire, someone he can regale with tales of battle.”

“Then the Warrior realizes that these repeated experiences have but one aim: to teach him what he does not want to learn.”
― Paulo Coelho, Warrior of the Light