The day was sunny, cool, and beautiful. The drive was easy and the paperwork non-existent. We did enter the large senior center building from one door and exit from another. A large man was walking by yelling, “Why the fuck do they make us leave by a different door!” The exit was a good twenty feet farther from the parking lot. He was very angry. I was mostly grateful for getting immunity from a deadly pandemic.
It was such a nice day and I had driven an hour, so I decided to take a spin on a local Waxahatche bike trail. I threw my bike into the back of my car before I left and after my shot I drove a couple miles to Lion park where a trailhead was. I felt bad about taking up a parking spot – the tiny lot was filling fast due to a kid’s birthday party.
The trail is about four miles each way and runs along Waxahatche Creek past a dog park, downtown bridge, cemetery and finally to Getzendaner Park – a big park in the middle of town.
The weather was beautiful and people were out and about all along the route. Walking dogs, playing basketball, birthday parties, hiking the trail, visiting the cemetery, or riding the mountain bike trails that also run along the creek.
Seven years ago I saw the play Red at the Dallas Theater Center. It was a fantastic play about the artist Mark Rothko as he painted the famous group of large murals for the Four Seasons restaurant in New York. Really good – one highlight is that during the play the actor playing Rothko and the one playing his assistant actually paint a giant canvas right there, in front of you. You could smell the linseed oil.
Something
In front of
Braindead Brewing
Deep Ellum
Dallas, Texas
“Many of [life’s] big decisions involve choices to have experiences that teach us things we cannot know about from any other source but the experience itself.”
If you have 15 minutes to spare, do not sit and chill. Instead, a new study says, you should go out for a quick, light jog. It will leave you feeling more energetic than resting, which will lift your spirits and in turn make your thinking more effective.
My Aeropress at a campsite, Lake Ray Roberts, Texas
It’s not surprising to me. After a lifetime of trying different ways of making coffee – the Aeropress is the best. I miss going to coffee shops – but I can’t imagine getting a better cup than what I can make with fresh-ground beans and my ‘press.
I can’t believe that this is a half-century old. I mean, it does have the 1960’s esthetic, but it is still really, really cool. The movie was a disappointment at the time (I looked it up) but this Bob Fosse dance number is fascinating. I’m a little obsessed.
“They waited for the elevator. ” Most people love butterflies and hate moth,” he said. “But moths are more interesting – more engaging.”
“They’re destructive.”
“Some are, a lot are, but they live in all kinds of ways. Just like we do.” Silence for one floor.
“There’s a moth, more than one in fact, that lives only on tears,” he offered. “That’s all they eat or drink.”
“What kind of tears? Whose tears?”
“The tears of large land mammals, about our size.
The old definition of moth was, ‘anything that gradually, silently eats, consumes, or wages any other thing.’
It was a verb for destruction too. . . .”
― Thomas Harris, The Silence of the Lambs
Trees reflected in a pond, inverted, with Chihuly, Red Reeds
The last paragraph of my journal entry from April 4, 2003, describing how I felt when I returned from a long work trip cleaning up a toxic waste site in the swamps of southern Louisiana.
I remember how I felt when that job was over and I flew back home. I had become so used to the swamps, to the green and the water – to the alligators and the snakes – that it began to feel like it was the whole world. I gazed out the window of my plane at the hard concrete and the terminal buildings of DFW airport, the metal planes and the masses of people – a sight I’d seen a hundred times but that seemed suddenly strange and alien after being in the swamp for so long. It took me a long time to feel normal again… or at least as normal as I ever feel.
“Anybody can look at a pretty girl and see a pretty girl. An artist can look at a pretty girl and see the old woman she will become. A better artist can look at an old woman and see the pretty girl that she used to be. But a great artist-a master-and that is what Auguste Rodin was-can look at an old woman, portray her exactly as she is…and force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to be…and more than that, he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armadillo, or even you, see that this lovely young girl is still alive, not old and ugly at all, but simply prisoned inside her ruined body. He can make you feel the quiet, endless tragedy that there was never a girl born who ever grew older than eighteen in her heart…no matter what the merciless hours have done to her. Look at her, Ben. Growing old doesn’t matter to you and me; we were never meant to be admired-but it does to them.”
“I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I was terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily, when the furniture of my mind was all undusted still, and threw them out the window in disgust.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden & Civil Disobedience
Stack of Stones
From my online journal (blog) The Daily Epiphany, from July 4, 2000, Tornado of Bats
Mostly we walked around the parking lots looking at license plates. Lee is still obsessed with getting all fifty states on his little license plate collection and I had told him the National Park would be a good place to find some more states. It was, we found a cornucopia of vehicles from all over. We were able to finish it all out except for what we knew would be the three most difficult states: Hawaii, Rhode Island, and Delaware.
Lee also was very overjoyed to find a dead rattlesnake in a drainage ditch.
The sun began to creep across the horizon, Candy and Nick came back, and we walked back to the natural cave entrance to watch the evening bat flight. They have constructed a good-sized stone amphitheater at that point and it was filling up fast.
The entrance sits in a sort of hollow and heads almost straight down in a large opening. The Ranger described it as toilet-shaped. As the hour grew later and later everybody became restless waiting for the bats to show. The Ranger explained that nobody knows how the bats, deep down in the depths of the cave, know when it is twilight outside and their arrival wasn’t always like clockwork. A thick cloud of pesky gnats was also driving everybody nuts.
Finally the Ranger announced that the bats were starting to come out and we all sat back to watch. The bat flight at Carlsbad is impressive. The bats don’t simply fly out of a hole and into the sky. They come up into that toilet-shaped area and go round and round in a vortex until they gain enough speed and altitude to stream out over the desert. They swirl in a tornado of bats.
It is an amazing sight and an even more amazing sound, the faint whir of hundreds of thousands of pairs of tiny wings. A gray flittering cone contrasted against the rock and cactus. I sat dumfounded at the beauty of it and the desert sunset.
The only thing that distracted the enjoyment was the idiot crowd. So many people were surly and restless and noisy – yapping and getting up and walking around – it was difficult to listen to the subtle sound of the bat wings. Most amazingly, they kept taking flash pictures. Again and again, the Ranger lectured us before the flight began, “No Flash Pictures! No Flash Pictures! If you have an automatic camera, the flash WILL GO OFF AND SCARE THE BATS, put it up! Put it up!” she’d say. Once the bats started flying, every thirty seconds or so… off would go a flash.
I doubt that the puny flash would upset the bats as much as the Ranger implied, but it is beyond belief that these idiots were doing this. One – she told us not to. Moreover, what are the morons taking a picture of? You can’t take a still picture of a bat flight – especially with a disposable camera. The bat flight is a moving, subtle, dark phenomenon. It was simply the jerk reaction of a tourist to snap a photo whenever confronted with wonder.
We sat around for maybe an hour until it became so dark the bats were almost invisible – we were one of the last ones to give up and leave the amphitheater. We drove back to our campsite at the tacky tourist hamlet outside the park. We were very tired and hungry – thank goodness a restaurant in the hotel was still open and served us watery spaghetti and a stale salad bar.
Wonder of wonders – as we walked through the darkened parking lot, there were only a couple of cars left, but Lee shouted with excitement, “Hawaii! Hawaii!” Sure enough, one of the cars had Hawaii license plates. Lee was tickled pink that he made this discovery, a car with Hawaii license plates in the middle of the night in the middle of the desert in southern New Mexico.
“I have no idea what’s awaiting me, or what will happen when this all ends. For the moment I know this: there are sick people and they need curing.” ― Albert Camus, The Plague
The pandemic has taken so much from us. Much that it has taken may never come back.
One thing that I miss very much is the rectangular plastic bar at the grocery store that you put on the moving belt between your groceries and the person in front of you. That piece of smooth plastic doesn’t seem to be very dangerous to me, but I guess other people, strangers, do touch it – so it has to go.
I miss it. I liked to watch the checker slide it down the little channel so the next person in line can wall off their purchases. I miss that.
The other day I had a list of groceries to pick up so I stopped by one of the local establishments (we do not live in a food desert – there are at least five grocery stores from several different cultures and styles of food within an easy bike ride from my house). The place was crowded, with several folks lined up placing stuff from their baskets onto the belt.
From the busy checkout line one over, behind me, I heard a woman say, clearly, “I stop at the bananas.”
I stop at the bananas.
What a cool phrase. How useful.
“Yes, I know there is a sale on papayas, but I stop at the bananas.”
“Sorry I’m late but on the way over here I saw a fruit stand. I stop at the bananas.”
“Apples…. not Cucumbers, I stop at the Bananas.”
“She’s a lunatic, not me, I stop at the bananas.”
“Every morning, I make a smoothie. There are lots of different kinds, but I stop at the bananas.”
Or, as it was today, a simple tip to the checker where the boundary was. It was right after the bananas.
“Danger’s over, Banana Breakfast is saved.”
― Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
Trophy from the Gravity’s Rainbow Challenge. Yes, I read the whole thing.
When the stars threw down their spears, And watered heaven with their tears, Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
—-William Blake, The Tyger
The Dallas Star
Falling Stars
The houses in tiny Plainview were all made of wood and the walls didn’t even slow the sound down. Mike could hear Aunt Alma and cousin Duane Clankman talking, even out on the front porch, reaching out to knock on the the door. Mike paused and listened to them talking… talking about him.
“Now Duane,” Alma said, “You need to be nice to him. It’s been difficult, you know that.”
“But why is he here?” Duane asked.
“After his father was killed in Da Nang this summer, his Mom, my sister, has been falling apart. She is having a lot of trouble dealing with everything. So we offered to take Mike in for a while, until she gets…”
“Gets her shit together?”
“Dammit Duane! You know I don’t like that language. Gets her life together. She’s gone off to a… hospital. For help. Until she gets better.”
“And when will that be?”
“I don’t know. All I’m asking is that you try to be nice to him. Try to make him feel at home. It’s tough on him too.”
“But he’s so weird!”
“He’s from the city. Plainview must be weird to him too…. Wait, is that him on the porch?”
Mike knocked.
“Come in,” came the voices of both Duane and Alma at the same time.
The door was unlocked. Mike pushed it open and noticed it didn’t even have a lock on it. No lock on the door! Whoever heard of anything like that! It was 1966 after all.
Duane’s father was out in the fields, drilling wheat. Duane, Alma, and Mike sat down to dinner: fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and green beans. It was very good. Amazingly good.
“Aunt Alma,” Duane said, “This chicken is the best. What’s your secret recipe?”
“Well, thank you dear. There’s no secret, it’s just that this morning that chicken was running around in the back yard, eatin’ bugs. Picked the beans ‘n taters fresh too.”
Mike felt his eyes get big. He always thought chicken came in plastic wrap from the store and green beans in cans.
Aunt Alma began wrapping the leftover chicken in paper, and spooning vegetables into a Pyrex bowl.
“Now boys, I’m taking this out to Joe in the field, he’ll be getting hungry. It doesn’t look like it’s going to be too cold tonight, I thought you boys would like to take the cots here and go camping.”
She gestured at two folded metal and webbing cots in the hallway off the kitchen. Pillows and sleeping bags stuffed into sacks were right next to the cots.
“Camping?” asked Mike.
“In the front yard,” replied Duane. “It isn’t really camping, but it’s kinda fun anyway. If the weather gets bad we can come right back in.”
That sounded crazy to Mike.
“Back home we couldn’t sleep in the front yard, it wouldn’t be safe… or even quiet enough.”
“Safe enough here. Nobody ever comes around after dark. Quiet too, unless the sheep are on this side of the pasture bleating,” Mike said.
The two boys dragged the cots out into the front yard and unfolded them, each pinching their fingers once on the scissoring steel tubes, onto the grass. They unpacked the sleeping bags and spread them out on the cots.
“Here, scoot yours around along the sidewalk like this,” Duane said, handing Mike a piece of white chalk.
“Why? And what’s the chalk for?”
“For counting shooting stars. We lie there in the dark and every one we see we make a mark on the sidewalk. Then, in the morning, we count the marks, see who wins. ”
“I’ve never seen a shooting star,” said Mike.
“You’re kidding me. How is that possible?”
“In the city, the sky is brown. The moon peeks through, but you can’t see the stars. Too much light and air pollution.”
“Well, we’ll see some tonight. In school today, the teacher talked about the Leonid meteor shower. Tonight’s ‘sposed to be the peak. She said we might see ten or so an hour.”
The boys straightened their cots and bags, stuck a feather pillow at the head, and set their chalk down in arm’s reach. Then they went inside to watch TV. As the show ended, a truck drove up and Alma and Joe came in from the field. Mike’s uncle looked exhausted, but was polite and friendly.
“I saw the cots outside, you two going camping?”
“Sure are.”
“Well, I wish I could join you, but I got another hard day tomorrow, need to get all the sleepeye I can.”
Joe shook Mike’s hand with a firm grip, like Mike was an adult.
“You two better get out and get some sleep now… no horsing around!” Aunt Alma said with a smile.
The two boys walked out into the dark and Mike instinctively looked up. He had never seen anything like that. The sky was a dark, inky, perfect black and thrown across the pitch were more stars that he thought could possibly exist. It looked impossible. It looked like more of the sky was star that not.
“Jesus!” Mike said.
“What?”
“The sky.”
“What? It always looks like that. Unless it’s cloudy.”
“Maybe here it does. It doesn’t look like that everywhere.”
They slid into their sleeping bags and arranged their pillows until they were as comfortable as possible on the sagging cots.
“Grab your chalk and look up,” said Duane.
It didn’t take long. There was something, something fast, a quick streak of light. It seemed to live more in Mike’s memory than in real time.
“I think I saw one!”
“So did I. Make a mark!”
Now that he knew what to look for, he saw the next one better. Then another, and another. Four chalk marks on the sidewalk.
“Duane, they are coming fast. Do they always do that?”
“No way, I’ve never seen anything like this. It must be the Leonid shower that my teacher was talking about.”
And then, the sky opened up. It was like a fireworks show. It was like alien showers of fire. The boys had to stop marking because they were seeing hundreds of shooting stars. They just stared at the sky, mouths open, transfixed.
Mike was astounded. It was like every star was falling from the sky. He thought of the city, where nobody would even see this sight, going on but obscured over their very heads. He thought of his father, and the exploding shells and arcing rockets that must have looked like this on the last night of his life. He thought of himself, there on that creaky cot in the middle of nowhere with the streaks and bursts of celestial incandescence exploding overhead.
He felt so small against such a display. But he also felt huge, expanding up through the air, up into space, enjoying this show that seemed to be created just for him.
The boys stared as the display continued hour after hour. Maybe they fell asleep, maybe they didn’t, but eventually the east began to glow and the stars, both stationary and falling, began to fade.
At breakfast the phone rang and folks came by. It seems like the whole town had wandered out into the night and seen the fireworks. To Mike the world seemed different somehow. The little town felt a little less dingy and plain, the air a little brighter and pure. The two boys ate their fresh eggs and homemade hash browns and then took a nap to catch up on sleep, secure in knowing that this night was etched into their memories, clear until the day they died.
“In youth, it was a way I had, To do my best to please. And change, with every passing lad To suit his theories.
But now I know the things I know And do the things I do, And if you do not like me so, To hell, my love, with you.” ― Dorothy Parker, The Complete Poems of Dorothy Parker
An old water tower rises above Deep Ellum.
From my January 1, 2000 Blog, The Daily Epiphany
Colorful Litter
The sidewalk in front of our house is a colorful litter. Multicolored confetti, including little plastic words “2000” “Happy New Year” and “Party.” Some torn conical hats and crushed paper horns. Gobs of awful Silly String cover my favorite tree, the tiny bald cypress that the city gave us, it was only a couple inches tall when I planted it, people teased me about it – now it’s almost five feet tall and finally looking like a tree. The colorful sprayed plastic string radiates out from the tree all over the yard, the plastic caps from the cans still litter the winter flowerbeds.
I should have cleaned the mess up today, but I thought I’d leave it. I walked out there with my bowl of black-eyed peas and rice and picked up one little confetti piece, one that said “2000,” and put it in the pages of a book for safekeeping.
Weight lifting, also known as resistance training, has been practised for centuries as a way of building muscular strength. Research shows that resistance training, whether done via body weight, resistance bands or machines, dumbbells or free weights, not only helps us build strength, but also improves muscle size and can help counteract age-related muscle loss.
More recently it’s become popular among those looking to lose weight. While exercises such as running and cycling are indeed effective for reducing body fat, these activities can simultaneously decrease muscle size, leading to weaker muscles and greater perceived weight loss, as muscle is more dense than fat. But unlike endurance exercises, evidence shows resistance training not only has beneficial effects on reducing body fat, it also increases muscle size and strength.
Sculptures, Clarence Street Art Collective, The Cedars, Dallas, Texas
I had a terrible time sleeping – finally at the early hours of the morning I was able to fall into a deep slumber.
The dreams I had were vivid. I was receiving a constant supply of Amazon boxes at my front door. They were of wildly varying sizes and shapes – some were long and thin, almost sticklike – others vast and bulky. They were all light in weight – as if they held nothing, or air, or ghosts.
As a matter of fact, every one contained on of two items. Half contained time and the other half contained happiness.
I guess these are the two things we really wish we could order online, but can’t.
Bill Chance 