Somebody Had a Bad Day

“The ambiguous role of the car crash needs no elaboration—apart from our own deaths, the car crash is probably the most dramatic event in our lives, and in many cases the two will coincide. Aside from the fact that we generally own or are at the controls of the crashing vehicle, the car crash differs from other disasters in that it involves the most powerfully advertised commercial product of this century, an iconic entity that combines the elements of speed, power, dream and freedom within a highly stylized format that defuses any fears we may have of the inherent dangers of these violent and unstable machines.”

J.G. Ballard, The Atrocity Exhibition

Lyndon Baines Johnson Freeway and Texas Instruments Boulevard, Dallas, Texas

Have a Party

“I believe when life gives you lemons, you should make lemonade…and try to find someone whose life has given them vodka, and have a party.”
Ron White

Four Corners Brewery, Dallas, Texas

I’m the Turtle, Son

“What are you?’

‘I’m the Turtle, son. I made the universe, but please don’t blame me for it; I had a bellyache.”
Stephen King, It

Delta Duck-Potato (Sagittaria platyphylla), Leonhardt Lagoon, Fair Park, Dallas, Texas

Music Used to Come Out of Those Things

“The only truth is music.”
Jack Kerouac

Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas

The Lost Glory of Mammoth-Hunting Expeditions

“He’s a man,” Themla said.
“I guess that explains it.”
“Hairy, Neanderthalic,” Thelma said, “perpetually half-crazed from excessive levels of testosterone, plagued by racial memories of the lost glory of mammoth-hunting expeditions – they’re all alike.”
Dean Koontz

Fair Park, Dallas, Texas

Whatever Passes Through My Head

“I paint my own reality. The only thing I know is that I paint because I need to, and I paint whatever passes through my head without any other consideration.”
Frida Kahlo

Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas

Like a Thought Trying to Form Itself

“Under the thinning fog the surf curled and creamed, almost without sound, like a thought trying to form itself on the edge of consciousness.”
Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep

Fog in front of my house, Richardson, Texas

A Funeral Procession of the Dead

“What you see on the freeway is just what there is,
a funeral procession of the dead,
the greatest horror of our time in motion.
I’ll see you there tomorrow!”
Charles Bukowski, Sifting Through the Madness for the Word, the Line, the Way

High Five Interchange, Dallas, Texas

Congealed in the Dark Arteries

“Here, are the stiffening hills, here, the rich cargo
Congealed in the dark arteries,
Old veins
That hold Glamorgan’s blood.
The midnight miner in the secret seams,
Limb, life, and bread.

Rhondda Valley
Mervyn Peake, Collected Poems

 

Downtown Dallas, Texas

Traded In Their Horses For Helicopters

The First of the Ninth was a old cavalry division that traded in their horses for helicopters and went tear-assing around ‘Nam looking for the shit…
—-Capt. Benjamin Willard, Apocalypse Now

Pacific Plaza, Dallas, Texas