Monthly Archives: January 2020

Before the Evil Days Come

Posted on by Bill Chance

“At present, in this vicinity, the best part of the land is not private property; the landscape is not owned, and the walker enjoys comparative freedom. But possibly the day will come when it will be partitioned off into so-called pleasure-grounds, in which a few will take a narrow and exclusive pleasure only,—when fences shall be multiplied, and man-traps and other engines invented to confine men to the public road, and walking over the surface of God’s earth shall be construed to mean trespassing on some gentleman’s grounds. To enjoy a thing exclusively is commonly to exclude yourself from the true enjoyment of it. Let us improve our opportunities, then, before the evil days come.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walking

Denton, Texas

Love’s Calm Unwavering Flame

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, Steinunn Thorarinsdottir, Arts District, Dallas, Texas

Written In Mathematical Language

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Philosophy is written in that great book which ever is before our eyes — I mean the universe — but we cannot understand it if we do not first learn the language and grasp the symbols in which it is written. The book is written in mathematical language, and the symbols are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without whose help it is impossible to comprehend a single word of it; without which one wanders in vain through a dark labyrinth.”
― Galileo

Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge, Dallas, Texas

We Are Going To Cross It

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Cherie, keep walking. Shut your eyes. We are headed for the bridge. We are going to cross it.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, After the Wreck, I Picked Myself Up, Spread My Wings, and Flew Away

Cable Anchors, Mockingbird Pedestrian Bridge, Dallas, Texas

Short Story (flash fiction) of the Day – Skylight, by Silvina Ocampo

Posted on by Bill Chance

Above the hall in that house with a skylight was another mysterious home, and through the glass you could see a family of feet, surrounded by halos, like saints, and the shadows of the rest of the bodies to which those feet belonged, shadows flattened like hands seen through bathwater.

—- Silvina Ocampo, Skylight

Damian Priour, Austin
Temple (detail)
2000 fossil limestone, glass, steel
In Memory of Buddy Langston 1947-2004
Frisco, Texas

 

Today’s short story is a piece of surreal horror:

Skylight, by Silvina Ocampo

From  The New Yorker

This story was translated from the original Spanish by by Suzanne Jill Levine and Katie Lateef-Jan. I’ve never understood why, but fantastic stories written in Spanish have a certain something that allows them to get away with words that English doesn’t – and, somehow, that certain something even comes through in translation. That is usually illustrated in works of magical realism (which are genius in Spanish but often twee and silly in English) but here is true in a story which… well, I’m not sure what is real and what is not – but it could be all real – relates to the horror of almost everyday life.