“Nature itself journeyed, seeking illumination.”
―
Grapevine, Texas
Seeking Illumination
Frequently There Must Be A Beverage
“Why does man kill? He kills for food. And not only food: Frequently there must be a beverage.”
― Without Feathers
Mural (detail), Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
A Flower That Was In Bud Only Yesterday
“It’s so curious: one can resist tears and ‘behave’ very well in the hardest hours of grief. But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window, or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed, or a letter slips from a drawer… and everything collapses. ”
―
Mural (detail), Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
Be A Duck
“Be a duck, remain calm on the surface and paddle like hell underneath.”
― Michael Caine
Bachman Lake, Dallas, Texas
A Bird’s Building Its Own Nest
“There is some of the same fitness in a man’s building his own house that there is in a bird’s building its own nest. Who knows but if men constructed their dwellings with their own hands, and provided food for themselves and families simply and honestly enough, the poetic faculty would be universally developed, as birds universally sing when they are so engaged? But alas! we do like cowbirds and cuckoos, which lay their eggs in nests which other birds have built, and cheer no traveler with their chattering and unmusical notes. Shall we forever resign the pleasure of construction to the carpenter?”
― Walden
Awakening, Part of the Traveling Man series of sculptures, Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
The Traveling Man Sculptures of Deep Ellum Celebrate Their 10th Anniversary
Travelling Man… and a jet, Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
Travelling Man – sculpture east of Downtown Dallas
Bike Riders under the Travelling Man
Travelling Man, Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
Tourists reflected in a metal bird. Travelling Man Sculpture, Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
The Travelling Man (two versions)
Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
In A Boy’s Skin
“Musically, he was like an old man in a boy’s skin.”
―
Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
Pointed Blasphemously At Heaven
“This tower, patched unevenly with black ivy, arose like a mutilated finger from among the fists of knuckled masonry and pointed blasphemously at heaven. At night the owls made of it an echoing throat; by day it stood voiceless and cast its long shadow.”
― Titus Groan
Mural (detail), Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
That Accidental and Unrepeatable Combination of Features
“The serial number of a human specimen is the face, that accidental and unrepeatable combination of features. It reflects neither character nor soul, nor what we call the self. The face is only the serial number of a specimen”
― Immortality
Mural, Radiator Alley, Deep Ellum Dallas, Texas
Short Story of the Day (redux) – The Quest for “Blank Claveringi” by Patricia Highsmith
“I feel I stand in a desert with my hands outstretched, and you are raining down upon me.”
― The Price of Salt
Illustration by Jean L. Huens for the Saturday Evening Post. Done for the short story “The Snails,” by Patricia Highsmith.
A long time ago – in 2012 I wrote a blog entry about a short story I remembered reading when I was a child.
The short story had scared the crap out of me when I first read it in 1967 (I would have been ten years old) in The Saturday Evening Post and it had never left my mind. In 2012 I did some web searching, found the story, and in a trip to the library found and read a couple of different versions of it.
Over the years since many people have hit that blog post searching for information on the story. It seems I wasn’t the only child frightened by this story of giant man eating snails.
The other day I finally found an online version of the story – someone has uploaded a PDF of the the version from Patricia Highsmith’s collection The Snail Watcher and Other Stories.
You can find the PDF here:
The Quest for “Blank Claveringi”
(Sorry, the PDF has been removed and the site now links to questionable material. If I find another copy, I’ll link it)
Andrew left a comment-
It’s one of the stories in “The Snail Watchers and other stories” and it’s available to borrow for 1 hour at archive.org – https://archive.org/details/snailwatcherothe0000high.
You have to sign up – but the Internet Archive is cool anyway – so now you can go read it. I’ve checked that book out, there are some other weird, worthy stories in it too. Thanks Andrew!
It’s a cool story – go read it.
Back in 2012, I wrote a bit of… I guess it would be fan fiction – a sequel to The Quest for “Blank Claveringi” – You can read that here:
I have wanted to write another sequel – a monster story about the National Guard fighting giant snails – sort of a Godzilla-type thing – The Attack of the “Blank Claveringi” – maybe I’ll write that over the weekend or sometime.
So little time.
Joy Cannot Fend Off Evil
“But, in the end, joy cannot fend off evil.
Joy can only remind you why you fight.”
― Dead Astronauts
Joy can only remind you why you fight.”
― Dead Astronauts
(click to enlarge)
Mural, Deep Ellum
Dallas, Texas
OK, it was Monday, the end of work, I was so very tired, I didn’t have my car with me, I had to get clear across town, if I really wanted to go there, it was cold, it was raining, it was dark, I thought about not going, I would get back home so very late, here’s how I would have to travel:
Work Shuttle – DART Red Line – walking downtown – Dallas Streetcar to Bishop Arts – Walk to Restaurant – eat a hamburger – Walk to Bookstore – Wild Detectives Book Club discussion of Dead Astronauts – Walk to Streetcar – Streetcar downtown – walk to DART station – Red Line to Spring Valley Station – wait for bus – DART bus 402 – walk home from Belt Line and Yale
Maybe I shouldn’t have gone, today is the next day and I’m tired I didn’t get enough sleep last night
But I realized I had to go because the book was so difficult and so WEIRD that I had to find out what the others thought about it. Also, I had fought my way to the end of a tough read – I had earned the trip and the meeting.
I asked the group, “Would you have finished this if you weren’t in a reading group? If there weren’t other people shaming you into plowing ahead and getting to the end?” Everyone (and I mean Every-One) replied enthusiastically “Hell No!”
What do I think about difficult books? What do I think about WEIRD books? What do I think about books that stretch the envelope of what text can do? What do I think about books that play with illustration and typography in odd and confusing ways? (think House of Leaves)
I did say that, usually, I judge difficult and WEIRD books… in the end… by an emotional connection. I don’t care if the plot makes no sense I don’t care if there is a conventional resolution I don’t care if the theme is obscure(d) – but I prefer it if I have some kind of emotional connection or some sort of inner payoff at the end
With Dead Astronauts there was some (but not a lot) especially in the Sarah section and at the very end. Was there enough? Is Batman a transvestite? Who knows
Now, the next big question is should I read more VanderMeer? (I did really like The Situation – a protoBorne novella) Should I read Borne? (set in the same world as Dead Astronauts but different – the people in the group that had read it said it was character-driven) Should I read Annihilation?( I saw the movie without knowing it was from a book and thought it was very cool) Should I read the whole Southern Reach Trilogy (A guy sitting next to me said he really liked Annihilation but the sequels left him cold because they resolved too much of the mystery of Annihilation)
So Maybe I’ll read Annihilation and skip the rest of the Trilogy. I think I will read Borne.
But first… I have to read L’Assommoir – Have to keep troopering through my Zola project – and then, in March there’s another Wild Detectives Difficult Book Club project – we’re going to tackle The Brothers Karamazov (about six weeks of work)………………….
So little time, so many books.
Bill Chance 