“There was only this one lamp-post. Behind was the great scoop of darkness, as if all the night were there.”
― Sons and Lovers
Downtown Dallas, along the streetcar line
There Was Only This One Lamp-post
Category Archives: Photography
Vultures Are the Most Righteous Of Birds
“Vultures are the most righteous of birds: they do not attack even the smallest living creature.”
―
Dallas Zoo
A Large Drop Of Sun
“A large drop of sun lingered on the horizon and then dripped over and was gone, and the sky was brilliant over the spot where it had gone, and a torn cloud, like a bloody rag, hung over the spot of its going. And dusk crept over the sky from the eastern horizon, and darkness crept over the land from the east.”
― The Grapes of Wrath
Caribbean Sunset
I Must Spurn
“It is not for me to judge another man’s life. I must judge, I must choose, I must spurn, purely for myself. For myself, alone.”
― Siddhartha
Buddhist Center of Dallas
American Bombers In the Sky
When the typewriters happen to pause (8:20 and other mythical hours), and there are no flights of American bombers in the sky, and the motor traffic’s not too heavy in Oxford Street, you can hear winter birds cheeping outside, busy at the feeders the girls have put up.
—-Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
B-25 “Devil Dog,” Commemorative Air Force, Dallas, Texas
Some Military Review, Or Another War
P-47S fly over in squadron box formations, four checkmarks apiece RedWhiteBlueYellow on the un-amended form of the whitish sky, squadron after squadron: it is either some military review, or another war. A plasterer is busy around the corner, smoothing over a bomb-scarred wall, plaster heaped on his hawk luscious as cream cheese, using an unfamiliar trowel inherited from a dead friend, still, these first days, digging holes like an apprentice, the shiny knife-edge not yet broken to his hand, the curl of it a bit more than his own strength could have ever brought it to … Henry was a larger bloke…. The fly, who was not dead, unfolds its wings and zooms off to fool somebody else.
—-Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
Commemorative Air Force, Dallas, Texas
Pinstripe
“Civilised life, you know, is based on a huge number of illusions in which we all collaborate willingly. The trouble is we forget after a while that they are illusions and we are deeply shocked when reality is torn down around us.”
―
Pinstripe on Hood, Car Show, Dallas, Texas
I remember in my youth, swimming in a lake somewhere (little fish kept nibbling at me). I was moving along a dock towards the sandy bit of slope they called a beach. There were some girls up on the dock and I could hear them talking. One said, “Yeah, I know he’s not good lookin’ and I don’t like him at all… but I’m going out with him anyway… he has such a nice car.”
I still remember that and, as I get older, I wonder if she might have been on to something.
Everything That Was Not Death
“He was mastered by the sheer surging of life, the tidal wave of being, the perfect joy of each separate muscle, joint, and sinew in that it was everything that was not death, that it was aglow and rampant, expressing itself in movement, flying exultantly under the stars.”
― Jack London, The Call of the Wild
A tree fell in a bad spot, downtown Dallas, Texas
I saw this waiting for the streetcar to Bishop Arts district. What really sucks is that tree didn’t fall by accident, it looked like it was cut down (though it was dead and probably going to fall anyway). I guess once it fell on the meter, they were scared to move it. Somebody is not very happy.
Love To the Present
“Gratitude looks to the Past and love to the Present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
Thanksgiving Square Chapel, Dallas, Texas
Why Are We Talking About Haircuts?
The barrage-balloon cables lay rusting across the sodden meadows, going to flakes, to ions and earth – tendons that sang in the violent nights, among the sirens wailing in thirds smooth as distant wind, among the drumbeats of bombs, now lying slack, old, in hard twists of metal ash. Forget-me-nots boil everywhere underfoot, and ants crowd, bustling with a sense of kingdom. Commas, brimstones, painted ladies coast on the thermoclines along the cliffs. Jessica has cut fringes since Roger saw her last, and is going through the usual anxiety – “It looks utterly horrible, you don’t have to say it….”
“It’s utterly swoony,” sez Roger, “I love it.”
“You’re making fun.”
“Jess, why are we talking about haircuts for God’s sake?”
—-Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
Fabrication Yard, Dallas, Texas
Bill Chance 