“You must write every single day of your life… You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads… may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.” ― Ray Bradbury
Walkway on the levee, New Orleans
From my old online journal The Daily Epiphany – Friday, May 25, 2001
Tres Rios
As the evening wore on, I slipped off for a walk. The still, hot, day was cooling off quickly into comfortable spring dusk. The blue sky was decorated with clusters of cumulus clouds smeared out like paint-by-numbers oils in the air. The rivers were noisy with thousands of click-croaking frogs, out for the evening. I couldn’t see them, of course, but I could imagine their throats bulging out like balloons as they sang their little songs. The walk along the three rivers was pleasant, at a level below the main park where all the thousands of recreational vehicles were invisible. Only a few tent campers were down there, with their campfires poring out sweet wood smoke – they had the best spots in the park.
“The simplest truth about man is that he is a very strange being; almost in the sense of being a stranger on the earth. In all sobriety, he has much more of the external appearance of one bringing alien habits from another land than of a mere growth of this one.
He cannot sleep in his own skin; he cannot trust his own instincts. He is at once a creator moving miraculous hands and fingers and a kind of cripple. He is wrapped in artificial bandages called clothes; he is propped on artificial crutches called furniture. His mind has the same doubtful liberties and the same wild limitations. Alone among the animals, he is shaken with the beautiful madness called laughter; as if he had caught sight of some secret in the very shape of the universe hidden from the universe itself. Alone among the animals he feels the need of averting his thought from the root realities of his own bodily being; of hiding them as in the presence of some higher possibility which creates the mystery of shame.” ― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
Abandoned Saucer House, Texas
The world is full of rabbit holes. Let your discipline and vigilance slip for one second and you will fall down one – not to return for a long, long time.
That happened to me today, as it does on many days. I am too curious.
The YouTube algorithm served up a suggestion for me. It was called “Purple Wigs.” I could not resist.
What the hell was that! I had to find out. I started to research.
These were scenes from the moon base from a 1970 British Science Fiction television show called UFO. It was produced by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson – their first live-action series. Up to this time they had done the beloved Supermarionation shows I remember (and loved) from my youth like Supercar or Thunderbirds.
The actress at the beginning of the clip is Gabrielle Drake, the sister of the wonderful and doomed Nick Drake and has fought to promote his music after his untimely death.
The show had a troubled production history and only ran for one season of 26 episodes. A few years later it became popular in the states (I was out of the country at that time and never saw it) which prompted them to get together for a second season. That too, was filled with difficulties and was ultimately scrapped. But the sets, scripts, and many of the actors were reworked into an entirely new show, called Space:1999 (starring Martin Landau and Barbara Bain) – a quirky show ahead of its time – which I had discovered back in the day and loved.
So down and down the rabbit hole. I looked it up on Justwatch.com and realized that I could stream the show (with ads) on Freevee and my Amazon Prime subscription. So I sat down and watched the first episode.
And I really liked it. They used the same special effects team as they did on the Supermarionation shows and the planes (love the SST) and spaceships look like the Thunderbirds. It is more adult, however – for example people die in bloody violent ways onscreen – and there is a strong sexual element. It is terribly dated in its treatment of women, of course – even though the women are given important positions in SHADO – the secret organization to protect earth against the alien attacks – there is a lot of gratuitous flirting and… well the costumes. Of course, I know I shouldn’t, but I’m so tired of… well… now… I actually enjoyed watching all the misogyny – and the men were treated badly too. Enough of that.
Oh, and the music. It is full of cheesy 70’s space cocktail jazz. I was glad to find the soundtrack on Spotify. I have favorited it – we’ll see how long until I tire of it.
Another rabbit hole. You tell me… a waste of time or one of those odd puzzles that make life worthwhile. Or maybe both. And oh, those costumes. Purple wigs? Purple wigs!
Poetry is the language in which man explores his own amazement . . . says heaven and earth in one word . . . speaks of himself and his predicament as though for the first time. It has the virtue of being able to say twice as much as prose in half the time, and the drawback, if you do not give it your full attention, of seeming to say half as much in twice the time.
—-Christopher Fry
Woman listening to a poetry reading by Mad Swirl – at The Independent Bar and Kitchen, Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
Modern Poetry
There is a poetry to daily modernlife so empty of everything else. The staccato rhythm of the traffic reports off on the shoulder one lane only eastbound westbound backup clearing Or the shouts of the Barista as he calls out the orders (actually, I think he’s making most of that stuff up).
And though my lawn has gone to weeds there is still a bird that kawarbles at me as I put the key in my car to drive to work.
The best thing about a bicycle second line is that when the parade pauses to let the slower riders catch up – you can dance in the streets.
New Orleans, Louisiana
If reason is so useful, why do human beings seem to be the only animals to possess it? Surely, a lion who had excellent reasoning abilities would catch more gazelles? Yet human beings seem to be alone in the ability to reason about things.
If reason is so powerful, why are we so bad at it? Why do we have tons of cognitive biases? Reasoned thinking is supposed to be good, but we seem to use it fairly little as a species.
Many people have linked to this recent op-ed in The NY Times by Harvard Law professor Ryan Doerfler and Yale Law professor Samuel Moyn. John Hinderaker of Powerline discusses the piece here, as well, and he calls it “literally one of the stupidest things I have ever read.”
Restrained, by Deborah Butterfield, Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden
“Rockabye Baby, in the treetop Dont you know a treetop is no safe place to rock? And who put you up there, and your cradle too? Baby, I think someone down here has got it in for you!” ― Shel Silverstein
CityLine, Richardson Texas Sculpture – Over The Moon, Gordon Huether, 2016 Bicycle – Cannondale Touring Bike, 1987o
I decided to ride up to CityLine, about a five mile ride from my house. It’s a huge new development in the long-vacant space of the old Huffhines family farm. At first I was a bit disappointed in the development but as it has matured and mellowed out I am beginning to really like the place. There are sculptures of all sizes and styles scattered throughout – I sat near this one and enjoyed a water bottle before riding back home.
“I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea.” ― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground
Coffee and morning pages.
For her birthday I bought Candy a six-month membership in a tea of the month club. Every month she gets two samples of gourmet tea from a different country – along with information on the tea and the place of origin. She liked it and it seemed to be a good thing.Unfortunately, the tea company also had a sister organization that sold coffee. They sent along a free sample – enough for two cups – of fresh beans which she gave to me. I ground, brewed, and drank.
Goddamn it… it was good. Really good.
It was from Costa Rica – from the flyer:
origin: Tarrazu, Costa Rica farm: San Isidro type: Catuai
This fruit bomb with lush notes of cherry, black currant, passion fruit, and cocoa comes from Hacienda San Isidro Labrador Project, a farm is located 1900 meters above sea level on the hills of Dota, in the Tarrazu region. It is a small, family-owned farm overseen by Johel Monge Naranjo and his son Matias. The pair focus on specialty and traceable coffee. Their product have consistently placed atop the annual Cup of Excellence competition that identifies the very best coffee being grown in Costa Rica.
It was an anaerobic fermented coffee – which means it was stored in barrels or tanks with no oxygen exposure and allowed to ferment to some degree. That gave it a unique, wine-like flavor – complex… that I really liked.
So I ordered some coffee – it was expensive, but not ridiculous. The order arrived promptly and it is a really nice treat every morning. So now, I’m hooked. That was an expensive free sample.
At any rate, I’ve been reading about anaerobic fermentation for coffee beans – here’s an interesting YouTube video (among many).
“It cannot be described, this awesome chain of events that depopulated the whole Earth; the range is too tremendous for any to picture of encompass. Of the people of Earth’s unfortunate ages, billions of years before, only a few prophets and madman could have conceived that which was to come – could have grasped visions of the still, dead lands, and long-empty sea-beds. The rest would have doubted… doubted alike the shadow of change upon the planet and the shadow of doom upon the race. For man has always thought himself the immortal master of natural things…” ― H.P. Lovecraft
Huffhines Creek, From the Yale Street Bridge, upstream, after a rain.
Here in Dallas we had been in a drought for the whole summer. It’s always hot and dry here in the summer months, but this was especially bad – we hadn’t had any rain at our house for a couple months (it had rained a bit in South Dallas two weeks ago) – our lawn was brown and all the doors in our house were stuck – the clay soil here shrinks something awful and distorts foundations and houses.
But yesterday we went to Fort Worth with my son and his girlfriend to visit the Best Maid Pickle Museum and grab lunch at Brewed (one of my favorites – I once rode the train and my bike all the way to Fort Worth for some Chicken and Waffles there). On the way back we drove into a Thunderstorm – it was scary on the freeways.
But it wasn’t as bad (we saw no standing water) as it would get later that night. Parts of East Dallas had nine to fifteen inches of rain, causing terrible flash floods.
This was a freak storm – but I am used to the summer phenomenon here of the sudden hard thunderstorm ending a drought.
For example, from my old blog – Tuesday, August 04, 1998 24 years ago.
Drops
I drove home from work this afternoon, the tape of “How Stella Got Her Groove Back” speaking its pages from the tape deck. Now, to listen to a tape while driving takes a lot of concentration. I can listen and drive, watch the road, but not anything else. It’s plot, voice, character, and oncoming traffic. Some effort, skill maybe, is needed; I’ve been checking out tapes long enough now that I can do it.
With all my attention focused like that I didn’t even consciously notice some shapes smearing on the windshield. Instinctively, my hand twisted the know on the steering column, setting the wipers in motion. Several minutes went buy before I actually realized what was happening, what was smattering on the glass.
It was raining.
Ordinarily this wouldn’t be any deal at all. But it has been so long, exactly a month actually, and the intervening oven days so broiling that I had forgotten about rain. No more than a sprinkle, but ohh, it looked so good.
I stopped for gas. Shoved my card into the slot and clicked the automatic hook-deal on the handle so the gas would flow on its own. I purposely stepped back, out from under the sheltering gas station roof onto the unprotected part of the apron. I wanted to feel the rain, get wet, see the spots form on my white business shirt. I felt like yelling, singing, dancing.
The smell was wonderful. I had forgotten the odor of fresh rain on dry grass.
Not much of a rain, not enough to end the drought. The hundred degree days will return by this weekend. But it was something… a respite. More than that, it was the return of hope. The killer heat will dissipate, the drought will be drowned. Until today, those indisputable facts were impossible to imagine.
Hope- a reminder that things will get better, that we will all survive. That’s what we’ve been missing.
If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that it is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know it is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?
—-Emily Dickinson
Woman listening to a poetry reading by Mad Swirl – at The Independent Bar and Kitchen, Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
Bad Poetry Tonight
Craig arrived early and promptly fell asleep in one of the old overstuffed chairs in the reading area. He woke up drooling on himself when the reading began.
This month’s reader, Harriet Von Snapple, was introduced as not only a poet but an amateur hard rock singer and harpist that had recently come out with a solo CD, Smeebage and Mung, after a stint with bands Creamy Blue Cheese Undressing and Schlitz the Prophet. She was different than the usual poets in that she was attractive and confident.
Her poetry was awful, but Craig liked what she said before she read her first work, “I work long hours for this awful man and I look busy and stressed but I live with it because I’m really sitting there writing bad poetry all day.”
Starting a single new ritual or habit, whether it’s washing your face every night or taking a walk every afternoon, can feel daunting for many of us. And just forget starting a whole wellness routine. Mornings complete with journaling, meditating, and yoga before breakfast might as well be aspirational, reserved for only the most methodical among us…right? Well, not if you consider the basic premise of habit stacking, which says that you only need to find one thing you regularly do by default in order to build an entire tower of routine practices.
Imagine you have an interview for a new job tomorrow. Some people might think about what kind of questions they will be asked so that they can prepare, or imagine the interview going well. For others, the thought of an interview will cause them to toss and turn all night thinking of every worst case scenario possible – no matter how outlandish these may be. If you’re someone who has a tendency to do the latter, you are prone to catastrophising.
We Stand Together, George Rodrigue, The Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden
President Biden wants you to forget about what happened in Afghanistan. He wants you to forget about the bureaucratic incompetence and incompetent decision-making by nearly every senior leader. To this day, no one has been held accountable. Accountability, even verbally, would mean admitting failure and taking ownership, something the Biden administration refuses to accept.
The reason lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same place is that the same place isn’t there the second time.
—-Willie Tyler
Dallas, Texas
From my old online journal The Daily Epiphany – Sunday, November 24, 1996
The weather gets nasty
A tremendous storm blew in last night, the harbinger of our first cold front of the winter. We had high winds, and violent lightning, unusual for this time of the year. About five years ago we were hit by lightning. We had only been in this house a couple of months, Nicholas was an infant, Candy was pregnant with Lee. It was about eleven at night, Candy was asleep, I was out in the living room puttering around when the storm hit. I heard about five crashes of lighting, each one closer than the last. It was, “crash, Crash, CRAsh, CRASH—BOOM!” The last one hit the house. It was odd, I was almost expecting it, the bolts seemed to be zeroing in one us, closer and closer, until finally one hit. The bolt burned out everything electrical in the house (except my old XT which was running at the time), you don’t realize how many light bulbs you have until they all burn out at once. It burned some ducts in the attic, and burned a hole in the roof of Nick’s room above him while he slept (I didn’t tell Candy about that for several days, I knew it would spook her).
Ever since this happened, we have been afraid of lightening, so neither Candy or I slept much last night.
Bill Chance 