“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Continental Bridge Park,
Dallas, Texas
(click image for a larger version in Flickr)
“They’re in love. Fuck the war.”
― Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
Dallas Museum of Art
Dallas, Texas
The old couple, carved from the earth like the first man, sit there, decade after decade, while people walk by and stare at them. It’s been going on so long, they are getting pretty sick of it. It shows in their faces.
“There is an hour when you realize: here is what you have been given. More than this, you won’t receive. And what this is, what your life has come to, will be taken from you. In time.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, Wild Nights!: Stories About the Last Days of Poe, Dickinson, Twain, James, and Hemingway
Trinity River Bank, Fort Worth, Texas
(click to enlarge)
I usually take a two hour nap from one to four.
—-Yogi Berra
Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden, outside of the New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans
Taking a nap in the Besthoff Sculpture Garden, New Orleans
“I do not particularly like the word ‘work.’ Human beings are the only animals who have to work, and I think that is the most ridiculous thing in the world. Other animals make their livings by living, but people work like crazy, thinking that they have to in order to stay alive. The bigger the job, the greater the challenge, the more wonderful they think it is. It would be good to give up that way of thinking and live an easy, comfortable life with plenty of free time. I think that the way animals live in the tropics, stepping outside in the morning and evening to see if there is something to eat, and taking a long nap in the afternoon, must be a wonderful life. For human beings, a life of such simplicity would be possible if one worked to produce directly his daily necessities. In such a life, work is not work as people generally think of it, but simply doing what needs to be done.”
—- Masanobu Fukuoka, The One-Straw Revolution
Dallas has never been seen as a city that is amenable to mass transit. Unlike an east coast megalopolis it was created in the age of the automobile – vast suburban tracts vomited out across the endless cotton fields along the pulsing arteries of constantly rebuilt freeways. But, for fifteen years now, we have had the DART rail. Always controversial, overly expensive, oft-reviled – the colored lines – Red, Blue, Green, Orange – crawled out inexorably across the map like vines on a brick wall.
Two tattooed guys – one skinny, one not – the skinny guy stands holding his skateboard, the other one sits hunched over a single speed bicycle – like a low slung bike for a kid a third his size. I am used to bicycles used as transport – this would be useless for that. It’s a bike used as a lifestyle statement. He rocks and stares at the chain like he’s afraid it will leap off the cogs if he lets it. Tired middle aged men slumped in seats, a guy playing a game on a smartphone, and a young couple standing in the door holding hands.
These are the people I live a lot of my life with. They are the same people you live a lot of your life with. Perfect strangers. Strangers on a train. I want to know these people and I want their stories.
The two guys, the skateboard and the inefficient but cool bicycle – they may be gutterpunks but they look like they are having fun. The guy on the bike moves back and forth at each stop to let folks get to the door or their seats. When their stop comes (one before mine) he shouts, “Off to another adventure” and shoots out the open door.
Looking at the young couple makes me ache. They may be poor and doomed… but together, today, right now, they are a thing of beauty. Beauty is so rare and so fleeting.
The others… all forgettable. But I know that the forgotten folks all have stories that will raise the hairs on the back of your necks. But we all sit and sway, look around, adjust our headphones, and get off at our stops.
While I was sitting alongside the reflecting pool listening to the music I looked up and there was this blonde woman wearing a white skin-tight stretchy shiny Spandex dress running barefoot as fast as she could down the middle of Flora street with a pair of heels clutched in her hands. She was trying to smile but was obviously upset at being late for something. Her legs were moving as quickly as they could, but she was slowed by that dress. Nothing much could move above her knees.
A few steps behind her, walking leisurely, but more or less at the same speed, was another woman, casually dressed, carrying a bundle of flowers and walking a beagle on a leash. She had a big grin watching her friend try and hoof it.
I wondered what was up, and then looking down the street in the distance by the Meyerson Symphony Hall I could see the last of the sunlight glinting off a tripod and a woman with a big camera pacing around. The woman in the dress was late for a photo shoot. Looking closer – I spotted a man in a suit.
Maybe wedding photos; maybe engagement. I don’t know about the beagle – maybe the dog would be in a few shots. I saw them start to set up and shoot some down by the Symphony Hall and then they were lost in the distance.
I didn’t think about them for a while. I was enjoying the music – but for some reason I turned my head and there they were, right in front of me. They had moved down and were taking pictures in the middle of the reflecting pool. I guess the photographer was at an angle where the crowd listening to the music didn’t appear in the background.
They were almost finished. I raised my camera and only had time to squeeze off a couple shots.
It would have been cool if they had dragged that dog out there too.
Bill Chance 