Contrail At Dawn

“I heard an airplane passing overhead. I wished I was on it.”
Charles Bukowski

Dawn, Bachman Lake, Dallas, Texas

If You Believe In Me, I’ll Believe In You

“I always thought they were fabulous monsters!” said the Unicorn. “Is it alive?”
“It can talk,” said Haigha, solemnly.
The Unicorn looked dreamily at Alice, and said, “Talk, child.”
Alice could not help her lips curling up into a smile as she began: “Do you know, I always thought Unicorns were fabulous monsters, too! I never saw one alive before!”
“Well, now that we have seen each other,” said the Unicorn, “if you’ll believe in me, I’ll believe in you. Is that a bargain?”
Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass

Winged Unicorn, Grapevine, Texas

The Dreams Of Spirits, Dwelling In the Distant Spheres

“I think our lives are surely but the dreams
Of spirits, dwelling in the distant spheres,
Who as we die, do one by one awake.”
Edgar Saltus, Poppies and Mandragora

Traffic Barriers, Fair Park, Dallas, Texas

Why Would You Row A Boat Race?

“I have never heard anyone profess indifference to a boat race. Why should you row a boat race? Why endure long months of pain in preparation of a fierce half hour, or even six minutes, that will leave you all but dead? Does anyone ask the question? Is there anyone who would not go through all its costs, and more, for the moment when anguish breaks into triumph – or even for the glory of having nobly lost? Is life less than a boat race? If a man will give all the blood in his body to win the one, will he not spend all the might of his soul to prevail in the other?”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Dawn, Bachman Lake, Dallas, Texas

Pay No Worship to the Garish Sun

“When he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.”
William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

Grapevine, Texas

Grow Wings As Ministering Angels

“The mother-women seemed to prevail that summer at Grand Isle. It was easy to know them, fluttering about with extended, protecting wings when any harm, real or imaginary, threatened their precious brood. They were women who idolized their children, worshiped their husbands, and esteemed it a holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals and grow wings as ministering angels.”
Kate Chopin, The Awakening

Dallas, Texas

But the Fighter Still Remains

In the clearing stands a boxer
And a fighter by his trade
And he carries the reminders
Of ev’ry glove that laid him down
Or cut him till he cried out
In his anger and his shame
“I am leaving, I am leaving”
But the fighter still remains

—-Simon & Garfunkle, The Boxer

Grapevine, Texas

The Color Of Love And Spanish Mysteries

“Soon it got dusk, a grapy dusk, a purple dusk over tangerine groves and long melon fields; the sun the color of pressed grapes, slashed with burgandy red, the fields the color of love and Spanish mysteries.”
Jack Kerouac, On the Road

Water Tower, Grapevine, Texas

The Dawn Remaking the World

“Veil after veil of thin dusky gauze is lifted, and by degrees the forms and colours of things are restored to them, and we watch the dawn remaking the world in its antique pattern.”
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

A duck at dawn, Bachman Lake, Dallas, Texas

Explicit In This Colliding Metal

“He dreamed of ambassadorial limousines crashing into jack-knifing butane tankers, of taxis filled with celebrating children colliding head-on below the bright display windows of deserted supermarkets. He dreamed of alienated brothers and sisters, by chance meeting each other on collision courses on the access roads of petrochemical plants, their unconscious incest made explicit in this colliding metal, in the heamorrhages of their brain tissue flowering beneath the aluminized compression chambers and reactions vessels.”
J.G. Ballard, Crash

LBJ Freeway and TI Boulevard, Dallas, Texas