“Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.”
― Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities
Taken through the window of an architecture firm, downtown Dallas, Texas
“And therein lies the whole of man’s plight. Human time does not turn in a circle; it runs ahead in a straight line. That is why man cannot be happy: happiness is the longing for repetition.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Downtown Dallas, Texas
“The Guide says there is an art to flying”, said Ford, “or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.”
― Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything
Klyde Warren Park
Dallas, Texas
He who can stroll by his fellow man deep in need without batting an eyelash, like a ghost passing through a shade, proves not only a miserable human being, but also possesses a great power, a person that can do anything they want.
—-Armando Vitalis, From Hell’s Heart I Stab At Thee
Belo Garden Park
Dallas, Texas
“In my father’s last letter he said that the world is run by those willing to take the responsibility for the running of it. If it is life that you feel you are missing I can tell you where to find it. In the law courts, in business, in government. There is nothing occurring in the streets. Nothing but a dumbshow composed of the helpless and the impotent.”
― Cormac McCarthy, Suttree
Downtown Dallas, Texas
“It is one of the unexpected disasters of the modern age that our new unparalleled access to information has come at the price of our capacity to concentrate on anything much. The deep, immersive thinking which produced many of civilization’s most important achievements has come under unprecedented assault. We are almost never far from a machine that guarantees us a mesmerizing and libidinous escape from reality. The feelings and thoughts which we have omitted to experience while looking at our screens are left to find their revenge in involuntary twitches and our ever-decreasing ability to fall asleep when we should.”
― Alain de Botton, Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer’s Guide to the Uses of Religion
“We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt
“How is the birdhouse coming along, Charlie Brown?”
“Well, I’m a lousy carpenter, I can’t nail straight, I can’t saw straight and I always split the wood… I’m nervous, I lack confidence, I’m stupid, I have poor taste and absolutely no sense of design… So, all things considered, it’s coming along okay!”
—- Charles M. Schulz, The Complete Peanuts
Wry Birdhouse
Main Street
Deep Ellum
Dallas, Texas
“Some hats can only be worn if you’re willing to be jaunty, to set them at an angle and to walk beneath them with a spring in your stride as if you’re only a step away from dancing. They demand a lot of you.”
― Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys
Klyde Warren Park
Dallas, Texas
Into the distance, a ribbon of black
Stretched to the point of no turning back
A flight of fancy on a windswept field
Standing alone my senses reeled
A fatal attraction is holding me fast,
How can I escape this irresistible grasp?Can’t keep my eyes from the circling sky
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
—-Learning to Fly, Pink Floyd
Pocket Park
Downtown
Dallas, Texas
“He saw very clearly how all his life led only to this moment and all after led to nowhere at all. He felt something cold and soulless enter him like another being and he imagined that it smiled malignly and he had no reason to believe that it would ever leave.”
― Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses
Plano, Texas
Bill Chance 