“Spring passes and one remembers one’s innocence.
Summer passes and one remembers one’s exuberance.
Autumn passes and one remembers one’s reverence.
Winter passes and one remembers one’s perseverance.”
― Yoko Ono
The Sword Of Damocles Is Hanging Over My Head
The sword of Damocles is hanging over my head
And I’ve got the feeling someone’s gonna be cutting the thread
Oh, woe is me, my life is a misery
Oh, can’t you see that I’m at the start of a pretty big downer?
—-The Rocky Horror Show
Plastic Bright Colors In the Snow
“We’re so self-important. Everybody’s going to save something now. “Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save those snails.” And the greatest arrogance of all: save the planet. Save the planet, we don’t even know how to take care of ourselves yet. I’m tired of this shit. I’m tired of f-ing Earth Day. I’m tired of these self-righteous environmentalists, these white, bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is that there aren’t enough bicycle paths. People trying to make the world safe for Volvos. Besides, environmentalists don’t give a shit about the planet. Not in the abstract they don’t. You know what they’re interested in? A clean place to live. Their own habitat. They’re worried that some day in the future they might be personally inconvenienced. Narrow, unenlightened self-interest doesn’t impress me.
The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles … hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages … And we think some plastic bags and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet isn’t going anywhere. WE are!
We’re going away. Pack your shit, folks. We’re going away. And we won’t leave much of a trace, either. Maybe a little Styrofoam … The planet’ll be here and we’ll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet’ll shake us off like a bad case of fleas.
The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after we’re gone, and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself, ’cause that’s what it does. It’s a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed. And if it’s true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesn’t share our prejudice toward plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn’t know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, “Why are we here?”
Plastic… asshole.”
― George Carlin
Huffhines Park,
Richardson, Texas
A Multitude Of Drops
“My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops?”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas
Behold the Reality Beneath
“I have seen a face with a thousand countenances, and a face that was but a single countenance as if held in a mould.
I have seen a face whose sheen I could look through to the ugliness beneath, and a face whose sheen I had to lift to see how beautiful it was.
I have seen an old face much lined with nothing, and a smooth face in which all things were graven.
I know faces, because I look through the fabric my own eye weaves, and behold the reality beneath.”
― Kahlil Gibran, The Madman
It’s A Miracle, A Cosmic Miracle
“They sat on a park bench, held hands, and told each other their stories hour after hour. They were not lonely anymore. They had found and been found by their 100% perfect other. What a wonderful thing it is to find and be found by your 100% perfect other. It’s a miracle, a cosmic miracle.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84
Bench, Huffhines Park, Richardson, Texas
What I learned this week, March 13, 2015
Call Me Ishmael
8 books to lift you out of darkness
When Shaka Senghor (Watch: Shaka Senghor: Why your worst deeds don’t define you) was nineteen, he shot and killed a man — and was sentenced to spend the second nineteen years of his life in jail. At first, Senghor sat in his cold cell and rationalized his worst deeds. “In the hood where I come from,” he says, “it’s better to be the shooter than the person getting shot.” Then, Senghor found solace in literature — and his perspective was transformed in prison.
My Xootr Swift bike with picnic supplies loaded in the pannier.
How to Set Up a Serious Folding Commuter Bike : Xootr Blog
I actually rarely commute on my Xootr folding bike – I view it as more of a versatile, fun mode of transport. I took a used Craigslist Giant Mountain bike and outfitted it with racks and fenders – use it as my commuter and light cargo bike.
Commuter Bike with Dallas skyline in the background. I need to take an updated photo – this one doesn’t have the fenders installed.
Magazine Street, New Orleans
How Bicycling Brings Business
Bicycle Second Line
New Orleans, Louisiana
Herb Alpert, Whipped Cream
Herb Alpert’s ‘Whipped Cream Lady’ now 76, living in Longview and looking back
Do I remember the album cover from back in the day? Even though I was only eight when it came out – of course I do.
One bit of useless trivia, Leon Russell (as Russell Bridges, a member of the “Wrecking Crew”) played piano on the album.
5 SXSW Eateries Off the Beaten Path
For my Austin peeps and visitors.
Bike lane on Yale, near my house.
Why bike lanes are battle lines for justice
15 Of the Best Jack Kerouac Quotes
“One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.”—The Dharma Bums
Look At This Tiny Drone [Video]
This would mean the end of privacy, if wind didn’t exist
Failed To Be, Before Becoming Themselves
“In their faces–plenty of them were handsome, but ruined–I’ve seen the remnants of who they almost succeeded in being but failed to be, before becoming themselves.”
― Richard Ford, Canada
Huffhines Park,
Richardson, Texas
Was This Thing Really Him?
“Samsa looked down in dismay at his naked body. How ill-formed it was! Worse than ill-formed. It possessed no means of self-defense. Smooth white skin (covered by only a perfunctory amount of hair) with fragile blue blood vessels visible through it; a soft, unprotected belly; ludicrous, impossibly shaped genitals; gangly arms and legs (just two of each!); a scrawny, breakable neck; an enormous, misshapen head with a tangle of stiff hair on its crown; two absurd ears, jutting out like a pair of seashells. Was this thing really him? Could a body so preposterous, so easy to destroy (no shell for protection, no weapons for attack), survive in the world?”
― Haruki Murakami, Samsa in Love
Dragon Park, Dallas, Texas
More Than A Face
“A mask tells us more than a face.”
― Oscar Wilde
Huffhines Park,
Richardson, Texas
Bill Chance 