When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Let God speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent. You are anxious because your path leads away from mother and home. But every step and every day lead you back again to the mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.
A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one’s suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.
So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.”
― Bäume. Betrachtungen und GedichteTree, Huffhines Park, Richardson, Texas, Reflected in water and inverted
The Hypnotic Eye
Monsters were monsters to me. I would stay up late at night and idolize the Saucer-Men, She Creature, Tarantula, then on the weekends on local CH 11’s – Family Theater – I’d watch Lugosi as the Monster, fight Chaney as the Wolfman and think that’s the coolest rumble ever! Monsters weren’t really scary to me. They were friends that really couldn’t dress well. They were esthetic types, who, for some reason, hated conforming to society – kinda like art students.
—-Joe Riley, interview on Latex Mask Central
The Dallas Eye,
Dallas, Texas
Since my medical incident I have been trying to exercise regularly – at least an hour a day. If I don’t ride my bicycle outside, I have a spin bike, with a television hooked to a Roku and a DVD player. I’m always looking for something strange, entertaining, and an hour long – so I can watch it while I ride my spin bike… to fight off the boredom. I was exploring the outer regions of the weird channels way down the Roku list and I found something called Badass TV. Looking through the odd second-rate offerings there I found something fifty-nine minutes long called The Hypnotic Eye. I know there is an old pulpy science fiction/horror movie by that name – but this was something different.
Back in the day, I always dreamed of getting myself a public access cable TV show and put a bunch of weird stuff on. Well, somebody here in Dallas did that. The guy’s name was Joe Riley (he was big in the early days of the Subgenius thing) and his show was The Hypnotic Eye. One episode was on Badass TV and I watched it and it did make the hour go by relatively boredom free. This episode was The International Show and it had a bunch of cool things on it – some I was very familiar with.
One was the fantastic dance scene “Jaan Pehchan Ho” – you may have seen this from Ghost World.
There were even a few Scopitones – which everybody knows is one of my favorite things.
So now I see that there are more episodes of The Hypnotic Eye available on Archive.org. I think I need to take a look.
Short Story of the Day – What Bram Saw by AE Stueve
It was a strong ancestral pull from the phantasmagoric, but curiosity shoved me toward Bram, toward the tapping.
—- AE Stueve, What Bram Saw
Detail from Eyes of the Cat, by Moebius and Alejandro Jodorowsky
Today’s short story – a tasty little nightmare of flash fiction:
And the Moon Rises
“Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”
―
One of my favorite bicycle rides is the Full Moon Ride – put on most months by the fine folks at Bike Friendly Downtown Dallas. The idea is for a group to meet downtown and to ride down into the Trinity River Bottoms and watch the full moon rise over the buildings of downtown. here and here It’s a lot of fun – especially since the trails in the river bottoms are a blast to ride at night – but it’s not exactly a place where most folks feel safe riding alone in the dark.
I struggle with a desire to take photos of the moon rising over the city – or of the folks riding their bikes. It’s a struggle – the lighting conditions are not good (it’s dark) and I still have not figured out a good way to carry a decent tripod on my bicycle.
There was a ride last month, on Friday the 13th, and thinking about it – I went out and bought an inexpensive portable tripod. Unfortunately you get what you pay for and the thing was not sturdy enough for timed exposures with my heavy DSLR. Only one shot – taken before the sun had completely disappeared (and before the moon appeared) was even good enough to stave off deletion.
Downtown Dallas from the Trinity River Bottoms – click to enlarge
I see there is another full moon this weekend. Here are the details via MoonCalc. I might skip taking my camera this time and simply try to enjoy myself. That is always the problem with carrying a camera – you can get so caught up in taking a photo you miss the fun of life itself.
On the other hand, I need to take my good tripod out and practice night photography. Once I get the bugs worked out and some skills developed maybe I’ll give it a go again.
Short Story of the Day – Exhalation, by Ted Chiang
Many lungs are returned to the same filling station the next day, but just as many circulate to other stations when people visit neighboring districts; the lungs are all identical in appearance, smooth cylinders of aluminum, so one cannot tell whether a given lung has always stayed close to home or whether it has traveled long distances. And just as lungs are passed between persons and districts, so are news and gossip. In this way one can receive news from remote districts, even those at the very edge of the world, without needing to leave home, although I myself enjoy traveling. I have journeyed all the way to the edge of the world, and seen the solid chromium wall that extends from the ground up into the infinite sky.
—-Ted Chiang, Exhalation
Stairway to Heaven
James Suris
Steel, Paint
Art District, Dallas, Texas
There is this peculiar thrill when you read something that was written by someone so much smarter than you that you stare at the page in amazement – gobsmacked by the arrangement of letters done in a way you know you could never do.
Today’s short story:
Exhalation, by Ted Chiang from Lightspeed Magazine
Have you seen the film Arrival? If not, why not?
It’s based on Ted Chiang’s novella, The Story of Your Life – and it too is so intelligent (both the novella and the movie) that you are a better person simply by experiencing it. The world grows, if only just a little.
The only bad thing is the jealousy. I, for example, can’t do that.
A Love Episode
“It was always the same; other people gave up loving before she did. They got spoilt, or else they went away; in any case, they were partly to blame. Why did it happen so? She herself never changed; when she loved anyone, it was for life. She could not understand desertion; it was something so huge, so monstrous that the notion of it made her little heart break.”
― Une Page d’amour
A Love Episode, Emile Zola
I am now a good chunk into Emile Zola’s twenty volume Rougon Macquat series of novels. Attacking this pile of books in the recommended reading order:
- La Fortune des Rougon (1871) (The Fortune of the Rougons)
- Son Excellence Eugène Rougon (1876) (His Excellency Eugene Rougon/ His Excellency)
- La Curée (1871-2) (The Kill)
- L’Argent (1891) (Money)
- Le Rêve (1888) (The Dream)
- La Conquête de Plassans (1874) (The Conquest of Plassans/A Priest in the House)
- Pot-Bouille (1882) (Pot Luck/Restless House/Piping Hot)
- Au Bonheur des Dames (1883) (The Ladies’ Paradise/Shop Girls of Paris/Ladies’ Delight)
- La Faute de l’Abbé Mouret (1875) (The Sin of Father Mouret/Abbe Mouret’s Transgression)
- Une Page d’amour (1878) (A Lesson in Love/A Love Episode/A Page of Love/A Love Affair)
- Le Ventre de Paris (1873) (The Belly of Paris/The Fat and the Thin/Savage Paris/The Markets of Paris)
- La Joie de Vivre (1884) (The Joys of Living/Joy of Life/How Jolly Life Is/Zest for Life)
- L’Assommoir (1877) (The Dram Shop/The Gin Palace/Drink/Drunkard)
- L’Œuvre (1886) (The Masterpiece/A Masterpiece/His Masterpiece)
- La Bête Humaine (1890) (The Beast in the Man/The Human Beast/The Monomaniac)
- Germinal (1885)
- Nana (1880)
- La Terre (1887) (The Earth/The Soil)
- La Débâcle (1892) (The Downfall/The Smash-up/The Debacle)
- Le Docteur Pascal (1893) (Doctor Pascal)
The next one up was A Love Episode.
At this point I have finished the last of the books from the Mouret section of the Rougon Macquat books. The Rougon section dwelt mostly on the upper classes, especially on the mad ruthless speculation in L’Argent. Then came the Mouret branch of the family – middle class workers fighting to get ahead – and not always succeeding. Now, after A Love Episode I will move into the Macquat books – where poverty, drunkeness, and madness await. I’ve read four of these already – will have to decide whether to re-read them or not.
One characteristic of the last few books has been elaborate, extensive, florid, and detailed description. In A Love Episode this mostly consists of pages of description of the appearance of Paris out of the window of the protagonists suburban apartment. The changes in weather and light over the magnificent city reflect the inner turmoil that the main characters are experiencing.
It’s a short book, the easiest so far to read, that details… as the title suggests, a romance. The love story is between a beautiful young widow and the doctor that lives next door. He comes to her aid when her daughter falls ill. This is Paris, so the fact he is married is not an immovable obstacle, even though she is of sound moral character. The daughter, however, is sickly and very jealous, which leads to complications and, this being a Zola novel, an ultimate disaster.
A quick, fun, read… with a nice bunch of interesting characters – folks like those that you will still meet today.
If you look hard enough
Short Story of the day – Riddle by Ogbewe Amadin
“A witch can never be these things,” she said. “A witch is a paranormal creature that lives between the shadows cast by daylight. They traverse the infinities of a heartbeat, they sail in seas of dreams… they manipulate nature.”
—- Ogbewe Amadin, Riddle
French Quarter, New Orleans
Riddle by Ogbewe Amadin, from Fireside Magazine
Today, we have a tasty little piece of flash fiction. Often things are not what they seem to be, but sometimes they are. It’s just that they don’t mean what we think they do.
Author Bio – “Ogbewe Amadin hails from the city of Benin in Nigeria. He is a student of Chemistry at the University of Benin. He is a lover of epic fantasy, sarcasm, sitcoms, and sci fi.”
The Sin of Father Mouret
“Albine now yielded to him, and Serge possessed her.
And the whole garden was engulfed together with the couple in one last cry of love’s passion. The tree-trunks bent as under a powerful wind. The blades of grass emitted sobs of intoxication. The flowers, fainting, lips half-open, breathed out their souls. The sky itself, aflame with the setting of the great star, held its clouds motionless, faint with love, whence superhuman rapture fell. And it was the victory of all the wild creatures, all plants and all things natural, which willed the entry of these two children into the eternity of life.”
― La Faute de l’abbé Mouret
Book Cover, Sin of Father Mouret
I am now a good chunk into Emile Zola’s twenty volume Rougon Macquat series of novels. Attacking this pile of books in the recommended reading order:
- La Fortune des Rougon (1871) (The Fortune of the Rougons)
- Son Excellence Eugène Rougon (1876) (His Excellency Eugene Rougon/ His Excellency)
- La Curée (1871-2) (The Kill)
- L’Argent (1891) (Money)
- Le Rêve (1888) (The Dream)
- La Conquête de Plassans (1874) (The Conquest of Plassans/A Priest in the House)
- Pot-Bouille (1882) (Pot Luck/Restless House/Piping Hot)
- Au Bonheur des Dames (1883) (The Ladies’ Paradise/Shop Girls of Paris/Ladies’ Delight)
- La Faute de l’Abbé Mouret (1875) (The Sin of Father Mouret/Abbe Mouret’s Transgression)
- Une Page d’amour (1878) (A Lesson in Love/A Love Episode/A Page of Love/A Love Affair)
- Le Ventre de Paris (1873) (The Belly of Paris/The Fat and the Thin/Savage Paris/The Markets of Paris)
- La Joie de Vivre (1884) (The Joys of Living/Joy of Life/How Jolly Life Is/Zest for Life)
- L’Assommoir (1877) (The Dram Shop/The Gin Palace/Drink/Drunkard)
- L’Œuvre (1886) (The Masterpiece/A Masterpiece/His Masterpiece)
- La Bête Humaine (1890) (The Beast in the Man/The Human Beast/The Monomaniac)
- Germinal (1885)
- Nana (1880)
- La Terre (1887) (The Earth/The Soil)
- La Débâcle (1892) (The Downfall/The Smash-up/The Debacle)
- Le Docteur Pascal (1893) (Doctor Pascal)
The next one up was The Sin of Father Mouret (among other titles).
It was only a couple days ago that I wrote about The Ladies’ Paradise – but in actually, in the real world, I’m finishing up three books ahead – my episode has put my writing behind my reading.
One interesting thing about the Rougon Macquat novels is that even though they are about the same family (if very disparate branches of said tree) in France during the same period of time – the books are often very different from each other. The Sin of Father Mouret is particularly unique.
It is divided into three distinct sections. The first is a fairly dry (though interesting) depiction of a devout priest in a poverty-stricken rural area – hanging on by pure faith in a run-down threadbare church surrounded by a population with less than perfect spiritual lives. Eventually the stress (plus the inherited family madness that runs through all the books) causes him to crack and suffer a complete mental breakdown. He has complete amnesia and is placed in the care of a wild, almost feral, young girl that has the run of an old garden – a giant park run wild with ancient plants gone to seed. This place, Le Paradou is described in intricate detail – a place of unbelievable fecundity in the midst of a barren landscape – set off by a high stone wall. Comparisons with the Garden of Eden are obvious, along with the ideas of the knowledge of good and evil and of original sin.
Eventually, a glimpse through a gap in the stone wall brings Father Mouret’s memories back and he is faced with the choice of returning to his church or remaining in the garden.
The language and description of the couple’s life in Le Paradou is luscious, flamboyant, and prolonged. The contrast between life within the walls and without is so great it almost reads as being unreal. I took it that way – reading in as more of an allegory than as actual fact – and that made the book more enjoyable, in my opinion.
It is an interesting read. I have never soldiered through any book like it. A significant change of pace in the string of twenty books.
Lawrence of Arabia
The trick, William Potter, is not minding that it hurts.
—-Lawrence of Arabia
One thing that I like is Fathom Events. It’s a company that shows special screenings on modern theaters. I usually go to their opera events – they stream the New York Metropolitan Opera to movie theaters everywhere.
Upcoming Fathom Events come to me in my email and one caught my eye. They were going to show Lawrence of Arabia. I have seen the film on television now and then – but I’m not sure I had ever watched it start to finish in one setting. I’m quite sure I had never seen it in a theater – especially not in a large modern screen with comfortable seats and food delivered to your seat… and beer.
“I’ve always wanted to see Lawrence of Arabia in a theater,” I told Candy.
“I’ve never heard anyone say that,” was her reply.
So I bought a ticket. I was worried that it would sell out so I bought it a week ahead, and chose a good seat.
On the day I settled in, ordered some chicken wings and a beer. Two guys came in, they had the two seats to the left of me. Another couple was behind us a few rows and a group of four off to the side.
That was it. I can’t believe more people didn’t want to see such a classic film in such a setting. The guy right next to me said, “Um, I’m going to move, nothing personal, but we might as well have some room.” He moved down a few seats on the other side of his friend. I wasn’t offended, of course, but it wrecked havoc with the waiters and the food and the bills and such.
The movie was great, of course. The desert scenes were the real heart of the film, spread out in glorious color across the vast curved screen. The movie is so unique, too. There are no female parts in the movie at all. It doesn’t have the usual epic arc – it’s really a personal story told across an enormous canvas. Key parts of the film are mysterious – it’s hard to say exactly what happened – and that’s another part of the genius.
All in all, a nice afternoon.
Drained the Pond
“Remain in the world, act in the world, do whatsoever is needful, and yet remain transcendental, aloof, detached, a lotus flower in the pond.”
― The Secret of Secrets
There are these ponds in the park at the end of my block. I think they are mostly there for flood control, but they look great. I’ve taken photos of them over the years.
Pond at the end of my block, Huffhines Park, Richardson, Texas
The ponds at the end of my block, Richardson, Texas
The ponds at the end of my street,
Huffhines Park,
Richardson, Texas
Men Between the Ponds
The ponds are surrounded by hiking/biking trails – it’s on my work bicycling commute. I always enjoy riding past or around the ponds – except on the days/times that the trail is too crowded.
Not too long ago, I noticed a guy sitting by the pond watching his black lab out in the water. The dog wasn’t far from shore – but still the water barely came up to his dog knees. That’s when I realized the ponds are a lot shallower than they look. They must be silted full.
Sure enough, a couple weeks ago, as I rode to work, I noticed an orange temporary fence around the pond and machines installing huge sheets of plywood, making a road to the water’s edge on the other side of the pond. Then, some workers started visiting the pond all day and night, using big portable pumps to empty the water out.
Then came in the giant shovel machines to scoop out the black muck. It was so vile and watery they had to lime it and then stir the mix with the long arms of the shovel buckets to stabilize it enough to scoop it into waiting trucks. The smell was awful – that mud had a lot of grass clippings, trash, and who knows what mixed with it and it had been sitting down there underwater for years.
One day there was an elderly woman sitting on a bench with her tiny dog held in her lap. They both were watching the machines work – unbothered by the smell of the muck and the diesel fumes from the straining engines. Everybody else seemed to be ignoring the scene.
Finally, they seem to have finished. I wondered what the bottom of the ponds would be like – they were too big to be concrete lined. I forgot that there is caliche limestone only a few feet below the surface (that’s why nobody in Dallas has a basement) and it looks like they scooped some of the rock out (it isn’t very strong) when they made the ponds – making big oval saucer-shaped indentations in the earth.
The equipment is being loaded up – I guess they will start letting the ponds fill in now. The calendar says fall – but it’s still summer here in Texas – not sure how long until we get enough rain… we’ll see. When they are filled I guess they will look exactly the same as they did before. Deep water looks just like shallow.
The drained and scooped pond at Huffhines Park.
The caliche limestone at the bottom of the pond. Huffhines park, Richardson, Texas.
Bill Chance 