“My heart is warm with the friends I make,
And better friends I’ll not be knowing,
Yet there isn’t a train I wouldn’t take,
No matter where it’s going.”
― The Selected Poetry
Mural, Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
There Isn’t A Train I Wouldn’t Take
Monthly Archives: March 2020
This Is Truly The Best Of All Possible Worlds
“That’s the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen.”
― Women
Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
PICOLÉ Pops, Deep Ellum and Bishop Arts
Short Story (flash fiction) of the day – Bad Things Wrong by Barry Gifford
Roy and his mother managed to drag Spanky over the side and onto the floor, where he lay puking and gagging. Roy saw the remains of the reefer floating in the tub. Spanky was short and stout. Lying there on the bathroom floor, to Roy he resembled a big red hog, the kind of animal Louie Pinna had shoved into an industrial sausage maker. Roy began to laugh. He tried to stop but he could not.
—-Barry Gifford, Bad Things Wrong
Someone is having a bad day.
Somewhere, somehow last night while I was surfing around the internet I came across some photos from the David Lynch movie Wild at Heart. I read and discovered that the basic plot of the film was from a noorish novel by Barry Gifford – a writer I had never heard of.
He seems like the kind of writer you would like if you liked that kind of writer.
I’ll have to look for his books. His latest work is The Cuban Club. From the Publisher:
A masterpiece of mood and setting, character and remembrance, The Cuban Club is Barry Gifford’s ultimate coming-of-age story told as sixty-seven linked tales, a creation myth of the Fall as seen through the eyes of an innocent child on the cusp of becoming an innocent man.
Set in Chicago in the 1950s and early 1960s against the backdrop of small-time hoodlums in the Chicago mob and the girls and women attached to them, there is the nearness of heinous crimes, and the price to be paid for them. To Roy and his friends, these twists and tragedies drift by like curious flotsam. The tales themselves are koan-like, often ending in questions, with rarely a conclusion. The story that closes the book is in the form of a letter from Roy to his father four years after his father’s death, but written as if he were still alive. Indeed, throughout The Cuban Club Roy is still in some doubt whether divorce or even death really exists in a world where everything seems so alive and connected.
Sixty-seven linked tales – that sounds interesting. Today’s short story, from Barry Gifford’s website, seems to be one of the short tales – if not from the book, at least related to it.
Bad Things Wrong by Barry Gifford
It’s a short read but manages to cram a lot of hopelessness and terror in there – concentrated and merciless.
Big D
“Just programmed my Alexa to order a pizza if I shout incoherently for more than 10 seconds”
―
Dallas, Texas
All over Dallas there are these… signs? I guess… big “B” and “G” with a space between. They are everywhere. The idea is that you pose between the B and the G… where you are the “I” in big, and in “BIG D.” You are supposed to post them with the tag #DallasBIG – Instagram – though people don’t have discipline and there’s a lot of silly stuff there. Actually, the tag #DallasBG seems to be better – Instagram
I don’t pay too much attention to these things, but I did like the guy eating pizza in this one. Of course, I was hungry at the time – so maybe that’s it.
Too Much Pink
Divine: Connie Marble, you stand convicted of assholeism! Your proper punishment will now take place. Look pretty for the picture, Connie!
—-Pink Flamingos
Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
Adjudged Insane
“In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
There is a tattoo parlor in Deep Ellum with a selection of odd and famous vintage newspaper articles taped to the window. They are all fading in the sun. Sometime one catches my eye – like this one.
Death Before Breakfast
“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming “Wow! What a Ride!”
― Hunter S. Thompson, The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967
Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
Volcano Live
“Love, my territory of kisses and volcanoes.”
― 100 Love Sonnets
I don’t usually watch these television daredevil stunt/event shows – specials where some amazing or death-defying feat is hyped to the moon and sent into your living room complete with breathless commentary and dramatic music.I don’t have anything against such antics and don’t blame folks for watching but I… I have a life. I simply can’t spare the time for the hype, padding, and endless commercial breaks.
Tonight,though, I sat down to watch “Volcano Live” where famed high wire performer Nik Wallenda walks over an active volcano with a lava pool. He chose the Masaya volcano in Nicaragua. It’s stretched out to two hours, which is too long, but I had to see the thing. I had to see it because I have been there.
When I lived in Managua in the early 1970’s it was tough to get to the vent of the Masaya volcano. It is not a tall, symmetrical, picturesque classical volcano (like the nearby Momotombo) – but rather a low, complex jumble of craters, mounds, calderas, and cooled lava. Actually, the active vent is called Santiago – one of several openings in the Masaya complex. We would have to make arrangements for a four wheel drive vehicle so we could cross the miles of extremely rough fresh hardened lava that surrounded the vent. It was black as pitch and sharp as broken glass. Most of the times we went up there the road would be washed out and the last couple miles had to cross on foot.
It was worth it, though. The Santiago vent was amazingly deep, with a bright red pool of molten lava at the bottom. Every few minutes there would be a crescendo in the roar coming from the vent and incandescent lava bombs would come shooting out, arcing and cooling to fall, black and solid, against the bottom of the crater. The sulfur dioxide infused steam streaming out of the vent was choking and nasty – adding another level of frightening deadly threat. At night, the entire top of the mountain would be bathed in flaming light, the crimson glow of molten rock that much brighter.
Some of my brightest memories of my high school days – almost a half century ago – are of me and my friends clambering around and exploring the rugged toxic moonscape around the active volcano.
Now, the top of the volcano is a national park and they have an improved road to the top. It’s a popular tourist destination. You should go there sometime.
Watching this crazy man walk across the vast space brings back so many memories.
A few years ago, my sister took a bunch of carousels of slides that we had taken over decades and all over the world and had them digitized onto DVDs. I dug through all those old photos (the only problem is they were all jumbled up together) and found a few of the Masaya volcano. I never had a telephoto lens and the fog was always thick so I don’t have a picture of the red lava, but it’s nice to help remember.
The photos aren’t of great quality – but I took them in 1973 or so – almost fifty years ago. That is really hard for me to wrap my head around.
The crater of Masaya Volcano taken from the rim of the active crater. It is a lot larger than this photo suggests. The molten lava is hidden in the inner crater – if you look closely you can see a bit of red. Looking at this scene on television tonight – it looks like that inner crater has expanded significantly in the decades since I took this photo.
A blurry photo (taken from a moving vehicle) of the low Masaya volcano complex taken from the highway several miles away. It shows the rugged lava plain that had to be crossed to get there.
Scrambling around on the top of Masaya volcano in the early 1970s.
Some friends of mine standing on the rim of the crater at Masaya volcano, Nicaragua.
Smoke, steam, and sulfur dioxide coming out of the volcano, Masaya, Nicaragua.
Smoke, steam, and sulfur dioxide coming out of the volcano, Masaya, Nicaragua.
Scrambling down a steep pile of volcanic ash, Masaya, Nicaragua
If You Pee Here…You May Appear On Youtube
A while back I was at a writing event at a coffee shop in Plano. There were about ten of us sitting at a long table doing some writing but mostly talking. The woman next to me told an interesting story. She and her husband owned an internet services company in Deep Ellum. The thing is that the location is just down the street from The Bomb Factory – a very popular Dallas concert venue – and the space in back of their building is a popular place to park. Unfortunately, it was not a public lot and anyone parking there will get towed. I assume you have had your car towed from some obscure spot during a late evening of nightlife revelry and know how nasty, upsetting, and expensive that can be.
The space in back of their building is heavily labeled and there is no excuse for anyone to park there. Still, they do and they get towed. A lot. So the woman’s husband put up a gaggle of high-quality video cameras facing the no-parking area and captures all the sadness and glory of the nightly dramatics. He edits them with music and funny comments and posts them on a YouTube channel. She said their channel has gone viral and they made a bit of cash from the millions of views they get.
What an amazing story.
So I had to check it out. The channel is GTOger and it’s pretty hilarious. There are hundreds of videos… here’s a typical one:
It’s a real time suck. There are cars getting towed and pissed-off owners coming back. I never knew how fast and efficient the towing companies are (my car-towed days were decades ago – when they actually had to hook a chain to your car) using that automated thing. If you look through the videos there are people peeing, fooling around, and even some photo shoots… all caught on camera and posted for all the world to see.
At any rate, the other weekend I was in Deep Ellum for a Dallas Photowalk. We all met up in front of The Bomb Factory and wandered off in search of photographic scenery. Before long, we were moving down Clover street – a narrow grungy road that was barely more than an alley. Suddenly it looked familiar to me and I realized we were in the GTOger alley right where all those cars were towed. There were the warning signs and the clusters of cameras.
The signage is very clear… I can’t imagine anybody ignoring it and parking there…
let alone taking a leak.
Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
The Moss is Silent
“The rolling stone rolls echoing from rock to rock; but the rolling stone is dead. The moss is silent because the moss is alive.”
―
Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
There is green life growing wild in surprising places – even in the concrete of the sprawling city.
Bill Chance 