Monthly Archives: May 2019

Pot Bouille

Posted on by Bill Chance
“When younger, he had been fun-loving to the point of tedium.”
― Émile Zola, Pot Luck (Pot Bouille)

Pot Bouille, by Emile Zola

In September of last year (2018) I began the task of reading all twenty novels in Emile Zola’s Rougon Marquat cycle. There was a three month gap in this reading plan as I plowed through Gravity’s Rainbow with a reading group. But now I’m back at it – though not in too much of a hurry… I am reading other books too.

I finished The Conquest of Plassans (book number six) a week or so ago. It was an interesting read – especially how it began slowly as a story of small-town gossip and intrigue and built into a climax of madness, horror, and death. Now I am onto the seventh (in the recommended reading order), Pot-Bouille.

That title doesn’t translate to English very well. I’ve seen it as Pot Luck and other things. From Wikipedia:

The word pot-bouille is a 19th-century French slang term for a large cooking pot or cauldron used for preparing stews and casseroles and also the foods prepared in it. The title is intended to convey a sense of disparate ingredients, the various inhabitants of the building mixed together, to create a potent and heady mix like a strong stew. The impression is to hint at the greed, ambition and depravity which lies behind the pretentious façade of the outwardly well behaved bourgeois apartment block. There is no equivalent word in English to convey this. The closest English term would probably be an expression such as melting pot.

In the film The Life of Emile Zola, the novel’s title is rendered as Piping Hot.

So, I think of the book as being called “melting pot.”

It seems to be a complicated story about numerous residents in a multi story rental house in the center of Paris – most related to each other in one way or another. To help with the book I spent a few hours and complied a list of characters I could refer to… then discovered somebody else had already done it.

I’m on the road and working hard for the next week, but I should be able to find some slivers of time and finish the book. Then on to the next, Au Bonheur des Dames – a direct sequel to Pot-Bouille.

 

Missed Opportunities

Posted on by Bill Chance
“Stop worrying about missed opportunities and start looking for new ones.”
― I. M. Pei

Dallas City Hall, Thanksgiving 2015

You Wake From Dreams Of Doom

Posted on by Bill Chance

“You wake from dreams of doom and–for a moment–you know: beyond all the noise and the gestures, the only real thing, love’s calm unwavering flame in the half-light of an early dawn.”
― Dag Hammarskjöld, Markings

 

Paths (detail), by Steinunn Thórarinsdóttir, Arts District, Dallas, Texas

Leaving Only Memory

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Precipitate as weather, she appeared from somewhere, then evaporated, leaving only memory.”
― Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance

Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge, during 2015 high water, Dallas, Texas

Their Great Horns Also Seemed To Attract Electricity

Posted on by Bill Chance

“When the longhorns could be gathered up and driven, it was theorized that the heat from the herd’s mass attracted lightning. (Such was the radiant heat from a large herd that a cowboy’s face would be blistered on whichever side of the herd he’d ridden by the day’s end.) Their great horns also seemed to attract electricity, so that lightning and ground-electricity would bounce around from horn to horn throughout the herd – a phantasmagoric burning blue circuitry. The cracking of the cowboy’s whips and the twitching of the cattle’s tails also emitted sparkling “snakes of fire.”
― Rick Bass, The New Wolves: The Return of the Mexican Wolf to the American Southwest

Richardson, Texas

 

With All Their Speed Forward

Posted on by Bill Chance

“I’m not sure he’s wrong about automobiles,” he said. “With all their speed forward they may be a step backward in civilization — that is, in spiritual civilization. It may be that they will not add to the beauty of the world, nor to the life of men’s souls.”
― Booth Tarkington, The Magnificent Ambersons

A while back, on July 26, 2012 to be exact, I wrote a blog entry called Bicycle Lanes. In it I wrote a bit about Richardson’s attempts at improving its cycling infrastructure. I praised the bike trails and especially the bike lanes (while noticing some dangerous flaws).

But I also mentioned how dangerous some of the railroad crossings are. For example, at Arapaho (a very busy street that is necessary for me to get to the library and a few other spots) I took this photo:

Rail crossing on Arapaho road – July, 2012.

I wrote:

There are three lanes of traffic both ways going through that little space – going fast, up to fifty miles per hour or more (don’t lecture me on speed limits… this is Texas). There is no sidewalk, no shoulder, no other way to cross. That hump has a set of rough wheel-swallowing steel rails sitting there on top of it. You hit that wrong on a bike and you are going down. There is no other crossing to the north for a mile. It’s two miles south to a safe crossing.

The Grove road bike lane is right behind me… as is the Arapaho DART station. If I want to ride my bike to the library; I have to go through there. If there is any traffic at all I have no alternative than to stop, get off my bike, and carry it over the tracks.

Which isn’t the worst thing in the world… but I wish someone would work on these choke points.

It’s been almost seven years now, and the city has done something. Here’s what that exact same railroad crossing looks like now:

Railroad crossing on Arapaho road, Richardson, Texas

Railroad crossing on Arapaho road, Richardson, Texas

It’s really only a couple of concrete plates, a bit of asphalt, and some sidewalk work – but it makes all the difference. To almost everybody – those that only drive – this is something completely unnoticeable. But to people that cycle for transportation (and for pedestrians) this sort of thing is a game-changer. To think that the city and the transportation departments are actually, finally thinking about people that aren’t in hurtling steel boxes is a breath of fresh air.

I know, by the way, that it isn’t a good idea to ride on the sidewalk – but that is a rule that sometimes, like along fast moving arterial streets – is made to be broken.

They did the same thing on the other side of the road – going the other way. That makes it not only possible, but easy, for me to ride my bike to the library. Little improvements.

I Could Dance With You Till the Cows Come Home

Posted on by Bill Chance

“I could dance with you till the cows come home. Better still, I’ll dance with the cows and you come home.”
― Groucho Marx, Duck Soup

Italy, Texas

There is something odd about seeing a movie at nine o’clock in the morning. Especially when it ends and you walk out into the sun… and realize that most of the day is still to come.

I’m glad that everyone has been good about not saying or posting spoilers for Avengers Endgame – though the movie played out pretty much exactly as I thought it would.

The Senility Of Obsolescence

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Why do things get weaker and worse? Why don’t they get better? Because we accept that they fall apart! But they don’t have to — they could last forever. Why do things get more expensive? Any fool can see that they should get cheaper as technology gets more efficient. It’s despair to accept the senility of obsolescence…”
― Paul Theroux, The Mosquito Coast

Recycled Books, Denton, Texas

I remember having a friend that tried to convince me to buy a Betamax.

I miss walking through the aisles of video rental store. The first ever Blockbuster Video store opened near where I lived. I remember going there and listening to some guy in a suit lecturing to a bunch of other guys in suits about how this was going to be the future. He was right… and so very, very wrong.

Everything In Life Is Writable

Posted on by Bill Chance

 

“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Unicycle, Ronald Kirk Pedestrian Bridge, Dallas, Texas

 

 

There are storm clouds all around, boiling and dark – but it looks like I have a few minutes and I want to get in a short bike ride. I’ve been trying to ride around the neighborhood every day – that seems to be the only way to build my fitness back. I’ve been riding my folder – it’s not the most efficient bike, but that means it is better for exercise (maybe?). It is comfortable and nimble – which makes it good for bombing around the ‘hood. I have this idea of wanting to have a destination – someplace to ride to… a purpose to the pedaling. I’m not sure why. Riding should be its own reward. If my goal is to integrate cycling in my day to day life as much as possible, these trips or errands run by bicycle make sense.

So today I rode to the ATM for the weekend’s cash, then to Taco Bell to get Candy something to eat. I decided on a bean burrito too and stayed there for a bit to read on my Kindle and to write.

I’ve got several portable digital writing methods to take on my bike. I thought about bringing my netbook (an old Toshiba netbook that I refreshed by installing Lubuntu Linux) but decided to go lighter. I have an adapter that lets me use a Penclic portable wireless keyboard with my Kindle Fire. I have a little folding plastic stand. Instead of a mouse (I do have a small one I could carry) I just use a stylus. I’m trying to decide on the best software – for now I’m using an android app called WPS Office/ Write.

My Kindle Fire, Penclic Wireless Keyboard, Stylus, and new wallet at Taco Bell

I’m using a new wallet when I ride my bike. A few weeks ago I went to a cycling event in Oak Cliff – which is too far for me to ride. I was feeling lazy, so I drove to the Arapaho Train Station and loaded my bike there – taking the the Red Line Downtown and then the Streetcar to Oak Cliff. After riding around all day some friends asked me if I wanted to eat some Mexican food at a familiar restaurant. I rode over there, locked my bike up and discovered, to my horror, that my wallet was gone.

I have a routine of packing my bike, places to carry my phone, my wallet, emergency supplies and such. My missing wallet was a bad thing. The only thing I could think of was that I forgot to pack it at the train station. Either it was in my car back there – or it was lost/stolen. I begged off of dinner and rode the streetcar/train back to my car.

That was a long hour. All I could think of was the sheer number of things in my wallet and how much of a hassle it was going to be to replace it. My work credit card was in there, for example and that was going to be bad. I resolved not to carry so much stuff, so many cards.

When I arrived back at the train station (it was dark by then) I desperately looked inside – in the console where I probably left it – with no luck. A heavy sign and I sat down and started the car and began mentally running down all the unpleasantness I was going to have to go through. I looked out the windshield and there it was.

My wallet was sitting right in the middle of my hood. It had been sitting there all day in the middle of a train station parking lot. I must have piled my stuff on the hood when I was loading my bike and missed my wallet. It was black leather on a black hood and hard to see. Still, I can’t believe nobody stole it.

So, I found a little zippered bag with a second zipper inside and decided it was a perfect way to carry my license and one credit card… along with some cash. I’d hate to lose it – but it wold minimize my exposure.

Actually, since then I’ve added my debit card and library card and carry it all the time. Minimization. The fat leather wallet stays in a drawer at home – I can get stuff out of it when I need it.

Time Gains Momentum

Posted on by Bill Chance

“I am now 33 years old, and it feels like much time has passed and is passing faster and faster every day. Day to day I have to make all sorts of choices about what is good and important and fun, and then I have to live with the forfeiture of all the other options those choices foreclose. And I’m starting to see how as time gains momentum my choices will narrow and their foreclosures multiply exponentially until I arrive at some point on some branch of all life’s sumptuous branching complexity at which I am finally locked in and stuck on one path and time speeds me through stages of stasis and atrophy and decay until I go down for the third time, all struggle for naught, drowned by time. It is dreadful. But since it’s my own choices that’ll lock me in, it seems unavoidable–if I want to be any kind of grownup, I have to make choices and regret foreclosures and try to live with them.”
― David Foster Wallace, A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments

Bicycle Drag Race, Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge, Dallas, Texas

 

David Foster Wallace wrote the quote above thirteen years before he hung himself. He will never be as old as me. I am closing in on being twice as old as he was when he wrote that quote.

It’s a shame he wasn’t able to stick it out – as time grinds on things get increasingly weird… especially in the sense of “weird” as in different than you expect and stranger than you imagined.