“My most important piece of advice to all you would-be writers: When you write, try to leave out all the parts readers skip.”
― Elmore Leonard, Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing
Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
Leave Out All the Parts Readers Skip
Tag Archives: b&w
Paradoxical Phase
Paradoxical phase, when weak stimuli get strong responses…. When did it happen? A certain early stage of sleep: you had not heard the Mosquitoes and Lancasters tonight on route to Germany, their engines battering apart the sky, shaking and ripping it, for a full hour, a few puffs of winter cloud drifting below the steel-riveted underside of the night, vibrating with the constancy, the terror, of so many bombers outward bound. Your own form immobile, mouth-breathing, alone face-up on the narrow cot next to the wall so pictureless, chartless, mapless: so habitually Hank… .Your feet pointed toward a high slit window at the far end of the room. Starlight, the steady sound of the bombers’ departure, icy air seeping in. The table littered with broken-spined books, scribbled columns headed Time / Stimulus / Secretion (30 sec) / Remarks, teacups, saucers, pencils, pens. You slept, you dreamed: thousands of feet above your face the steel bombers passed, wave after wave.
—-Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
Business End, B-24 Liberator, Commemorative Air Force, Dallas, Texas
They Built For Eternity
“They swore by concrete. They built for eternity.”
― Gunter Grass
Concrete slab, Fabrication Yard, Dallas, Texas
As I was walking around looking at the various walls full of graffiti at the Fabrication Yard, my eyes fell to my feet and I spotted this little metal thing embedded in the concrete. I’ve seen these before, but never really looked at them. Back home, it didn’t take much looking – it’s from the Jack Day Construction Company – which, of course, specializes in concrete work.
They Are In Love. Fuck the War
“The nights are filled with explosion and motor transport, and wind that brings them up over the downs a last smack of the sea. Day begins with a hot cup and a cigarette over a little table with a weak leg that Roger has repaired, provisionally, with brown twine. There’s never much talk but touches and looks, smiles together, curses for parting. It is marginal, hungry, chilly – most times they’re too paranoid to risk a fire – but it’s something they want to keep, so much that to keep it they will take on more than propaganda has ever asked them for. They are in love. Fuck the war.”
― Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
Arts District, Dallas, Texas
He Bought A House
Here lies Walter Fielding. He bought a house, and it killed him.
—-The Money Pit
House Being Remodeled, The Cedars, Dallas, Texas
Mud, Footprints, and Bicycle Tracks
“She made beauty all round her. When she trod on mud, the mud was beautiful; when she ran in the rain, the rain was silver. When she picked up a toad – she had the strangest and, I thought, unchanciest love for all manner of brutes – the toad became beautiful.”
― C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces
mud, footprints, bicycle tracks – Trinity River, Dallas, Texas
I See the Top Of the Chimney
“I have never felt like I was creating anything. For me, writing is like walking through a desert and all at once, poking up through the hardpan, I see the top of a chimney. I know there’s a house under there, and I’m pretty sure that I can dig it up if I want. That’s how I feel. It’s like the stories are already there. What they pay me for is the leap of faith that says: “If I sit down and do this, everything will come out OK.”
―
American Beauty Mill, Dallas, Texas
A Pretense Of Happiness?
“One night, as I was sleeping, Norman appeared to me and told me to relax, that he was fine. Then, but I’m not sure if this was in the dream or when I woke up shouting, I realized that Norman seemed to be in Mexican heaven, not Jewish heaven, let alone philosophy heaven or Marxist heaven. But what was goddamned Mexican heaven? A pretense of happiness? or what lay behind it? empty gestures? or what was hidden (for reasons of survival) behind them? A little later I started to work at an advertising agency.”
― Roberto Bolaño, The Savage Detectives
Pepper Lamp, Cozumel, Mexico
Dust On A Butterfly’s Wings
“His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly’s wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred. Later he became conscious of his damaged wings and of their construction and he learned to think and could not fly any more because the love of flight was gone and he could only remember when it had been effortless.”
― Ernest Hemingway
Wings Over Dallas
Never Surrender
“We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.”
― Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War: Alone
8 50 Caliber Machine Guns, Commemorative Air Force, Wings Over Dallas
Bill Chance 