I took this photograph as a message to a friend. If they see it they won’t know it is to them and they won’t understand what it says. And neither do I.
Woodall Rogers Freeway
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Woodall Rogers
Tag Archives: Dallas
Looking At Her Phone in the Dark
“I fear the day technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots.”
—- Albert Einstein
There is something special about standing around in the middle of the night and talking with a bunch of your best friends. To stand around with them in front of a beautiful art museum is extra special.
So special, in fact, that it is something that you would have to text to a bunch of people… people that aren’t there.
“This is the whole point of technology. It creates an appetite for immortality on the one hand. It threatens universal extinction on the other. Technology is lust removed from nature. – Murray (WN 285)”
—- Don DeLillo, White Noise Critical: Text and Criticism
A group of friends in front of the Dallas Museum of Art, night, long exposure
“This was before voice mail, recorded phone messages you can’t escape. Life was easier then. You just didn’t pick up the phone.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, Beasts
I used to work a little closer to where I lived. Sometimes, I would go home for lunch… but not very often. One day, while I was home, the phone rang. This was before caller ID – back in the days when people would actually answer their phones. It was, however, after the invention and installation of the answering machine….
…do you remember when these had little tapes in them? Once, I left for a long business trip and when I returned I had a large collection of very interesting phone messages left from a number of my friends and even a couple of cool ones from strangers. I liked these so much I replaced the tape with a fresh one and carried the old one around with me for a year or so. Sometimes I’d listen to it for fun. I know that sounds stupid – but I wish I had that tape now, thirty years later. I’d love to hear it again.
…at any rate, back to the story. I was home, the phone rang, I picked it up. It was a friend. She said, “Oh, I didn’t think anyone would be home. I called to leave a message.”
“I’m home making a sandwich. But it’s ok,” I said. “I’ll hang up and you can call back and leave a message.”
So I did. And she did.
When the phone rang my hand quivered over the receiver. I was torn on whether I should pick it up (as a joke, you know) or to let it ring and let her leave her message. I decided the joke was too stupid (strange, I know – I don’t usually pass up an opportunity for a stupid joke). As the machine picked up, I walked out the door, left for work, and let her leave her message in private.
I never listened to it.
We’re Walking Here
I’m walkin’
Yes indeed, I’m talkin’
By you and me, I’m hopin’
That you’ll come back to me, yeah, yeahI’m lonely
Yes I can be, I’m waitin’
For your company, I’m hopin’
That you’ll come back to meWhat you gonna do when the well runs dry?
You gonna run away and hide
I’m gonna run right by your side
For you pretty baby I’ll even die—-Fats Domino – I’m Walking Lyrics
The anime convention is in town.
Near Main Street Garden Park, Dallas, Texas
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Dedicated urbanites “know” beyond shadow of doubt – because doubt never raises its disturbing head – that civilization is the real world: you only “escape” to wilderness. When you’re out and away and immersed, you “know” the obverse: the wilderness world is real, the human world a superimposed facade… The controversy is, of course, spurious. Neither view can stand alone. Both worlds are real. But the wilderness world is certainly older and will almost certainly last longer. Besides, the second view seems far healthier for a human to embrace.
—-Colin Fletcher, River, 1997Frankly, I fail to see how going for a six-month, thousand-mile walk through deserts and mountains can be judged less real than spending six months working eight hours a day, five days a week, in order to earn enough money to be able to come back to a comfortable home in the evening and sit in front of a TV screen and watch the two-dimensional image of some guy talking about a book he has written on a six-month, thousand-mile walk through deserts and mountains.
—- Colin Fletcher, The Complete Walker III, 1989
An Object of Beauty
“Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes. working jobs we hate, so we can buy shit we don’t need.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
I have never been a car guy. I am interested in three things in an automobile. One, that it start. Two, that it get to where I want it to go without falling apart. And Three, since I live in Texas, well, air conditioning is important.
Other than that…
On the other hand, this is, without a doubt, a thing of great beauty.
Invasion Car Show
Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
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Quick! Hang a right…Cut over to G Street. I just saw a vision! I saw a goddess. Come on, you’ve got to catch up to her… This was the most perfect, dazzling creature I’ve ever seen… She spoke to me. She spoke to me right through the window. I think she said, ‘I love you.’ That means nothing to you people? You have no romance, no soul? She – someone wants me. Someone roaming the streets wants me! Will you turn the corner?
—-Curt Henderson, American Graffiti
This is the American dream forged in steel and covered in gloss. The curves, the mass, and the speed. Conceived in that back seat would be the only way to properly start out a real life. It’s painted the color of Angel’s blood and polished until the objects that appear in its coat are more real than life.
And that’s what it looks like standing still. Think of the throaty roar of the engine – the smell of the exhaust – the blare of the radio (I still don’t think digital music sounds right in a car – nothing since the quadraphonic eight track has).
I was looking at this car and a cop walked up, stood beside me, and said, “That is a beautiful car.”
“It sure is,” I replied.
I guess I should have made a note of its make and year, maybe the person or garage that restored it… but I didn’t. I usually do that sort of thing, but I guess I wanted that car to exist simply as it is, as a vision of metal, rubber, glass, and paint – not as an object with a history that was created from nothing by the mind and sweat of men.
Drivers Wanted
–VolkswagenThe power of Dreams
–HondaEverything We Do is Driven By You
–FordNever Follow
–AudiPorsche, There is No Substitute
–PorscheEngineered to move the human spirit
–Mercedes-BenzBorn to perform
–JaguarBaseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet
–ChevroletSheer driving pleasure.
–BMWDon’t dream it. Drive it.
–JaguarThe Penalty of Leadership
–CadillacZoom, Zoom, Zoom
–MazdaThe Relentless Pursuit of Perfection
–Lexus
Sushi and Georgia O’Keeffe
Crazy Fish Sushi and a book of Georgia O’Keeffe paintings
(Click to Enlarge)
It was way too hot. The mercury was rising well past the century mark and the Texas sun was beating down, roasting the world with its searing incandescence – still, I wanted to get out and do a bike ride – get some mobile urban photography done – for fun and fodder for blog entries. I packed up, rode to the station, took the DART train downtown and started wandering around.
The night before I had ridden some similar streets with a lot of other folks – the Critical Mass Dallas last-friday-of-the-month ride. I had a blast. We rode from Main Street Garden Park, through downtown, past the Hyatt Regency and across into Oak Cliff, down to Bishop Arts, and then on to a Cuban-Themed party on a rooftop along Jefferson Street (a few doors down from the Texas Theater).
A lot of cool folks, a good time. We rode back across the Jefferson Street Viaduct bike lane – which was spectacular at night. I’m going to have to repeat some of that ride with a camera and a bit of time.
At any rate – one nice thing about a night ride is the cool air.
By noon the next day – cool air was only found inside.
I locked up my bike in Deep Ellum and started walking around, but the heat was getting to me. I was feeling dizzy and my mind was fuzzing up like an old slice of bread. So I thought about bailing and heading home to flop around in the air conditioning, but I had brought two liters of iced water in the cooler that straps to the back of my commuter bike. I’ve learned that I can take the heat pretty well as long as I keep moving and drink as much cold water as possible.
I drank some water, rode a bit, drank some more, found some shade… and felt a lot better.
A week ago, I had been in Klyde Warren park, killing a few minutes, and had thumbed through a book of Georgia O’Keeffe paintings that was set out in the reading room in the park. One quote from the book was still rattling around in my head – but I couldn’t remember it exactly and without the exact words couldn’t find it on the Internet. I wanted to use the quotation for a bit of writing/photography. The mystery quote was bothering me like an unscratched itch so I decided to ride back there and take another look at the book.
While I was there I bought a sushi roll from the Crazy Fish Truck (plus more cold water and a diet coke ). Then I was able to get a little green table in some dappled shade and sit down with the paintings and my food and hang.
Oh, I did misremember the quote a little bit. I am happy to set the record straight – but I’m thinking that my misremembered version might be… if not better, more useful for my purposes.
Crazy Fish Sushi Roll, and a Georgia O’Keeffe
Arrow to Nasher
“Sure, everything is ending,” Jules said, “but not yet.”
― Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad
Time Exposure, Night, Downtown Dallas, Ross and Olive
“No matter how much time passes, no matter what takes place in the interim, there are some things we can never assign to oblivion, memories we can never rub away.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
A familiar bit of street, smeared out in time, like a fuzzy memory. All the remembrances of that place are layered upon each other. Some are stronger than others – surprisingly, the strongest are often the oldest.
Because the oldest are the first. When everything is new and fresh.
I remember the first time I walked along – crossed at a light – Ross avenue. The big city was fresh in my young mind. I remember when I first turned off Ross to get to the Nasher Sculpture Center – it was many years later and I wasn’t that young any more (though I was a lot younger than I am now – but I didn’t know that then) but the Nasher was fresh and new. I’ve been back.
Lee inside My Curves are Not Mad – Richard Serra, 2004
Lee inside the same sculpture by Richard Serra – My Curves are Not Mad in 2011. Lee is not the only thing that has grown – look how much larger the trees are.
“Time it was
And what a time it was, it was
A time of innocence
A time of confidencesLong ago it must be
I have a photograph
Preserve your memories
They’re all that’s left you”
― Paul Simon
Lee sitting by Night, 2004
Night (La Nuit) – 2011 (they had moved the sculpture)
“He walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like ground-foxes in their cover. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road
Eve, by Rodin, 2004
Eve, by Rodin
“Belief, like fear or love, is a force to be understood as we understand the theory of relativity and principals of uncertainty. Phenomena that determine the course of our lives. Yesterday, my life was headed in one direction. Today, it is headed in another. Yesterday, I believe I would never have done what I did today. These forces that often remake time and space, that can shape and alter who we
imagine ourselves to be, begin long before we are born and continue after we perish. Our lives and our choices, like quantum trajectories, are understood moment to moment. That each point of intersection, each encounter, suggest a new potential direction. Proposition, I have fallen in love with Luisa Rey. Is this possible? I just met her and yet, I feel like something important has happened to me.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas
Blur in the Intersection
“The long triangular grooves on the car had been formed within the death of an unknown creature, its vanished identity abstracted in terms of the geometry of this vehicle. How much more mysterious would be our own deaths, and those of the famous and powerful?”
― J.G. Ballard, Crash
Time Exposure, Night, Downtown Dallas, Ross and Pearl
(Click to Enlarge)
Sometimes the world is hidden in the nooks and crannies of the cable television spectrum – especially in the middle of the night.
There are these shows when some bunch of celebrity grease monkeys steal some poor victim’s car and then rebuild it – adding subwoofers that can shatter glass eardrums, lights visible from other planets, and an aquarium in the rear deck— things like that. Hopefully, they also shove in an engine that starts and brakes that stop.
At the climax – the reveal – the dupe is shown his new pimped-out chariot and he cries. He says, always, “Thank you. My life is changed.” The show ends with the impression that everything will be all right now.
I like that part. I am a sucker for redemption. I like to bask in the feeling that it is even possible that everything will be all right (although I know that it is not true).
Think about it. They are talking about a car. A hunk of metal and rubber – a capsule of steel and glass – a rolling coffin propelled by the burning ghosts of ancient jungles.
But maybe they are right. A car is freedom. A car is the ability to change your location at will. A car is sex… and a nice car is good sex.
When I was young, I went to a lake with a friend of mine and we were swimming in the green water, constantly being slightly bitten by tiny fish, and listening to some women talking to each other while they sunned on a worn wooden dock. One asked another if it was OK if she went out and had her hair cut the same way as the other. Then one asked another about her boyfriend.
“I don’t know,” she answered, “I don’t really like the guy, he doesn’t treat me that well, but he has that really nice sports car.”
“After being bombarded endlessly by road-safety propaganda it was almost a relief to find myself in an actual accident.”
― J.G. Ballard, Crash
Street Sign
Time Exposure, Night, Downtown Dallas, Ross and Olive
Phoenix pushed back on his chair and leaned up against the rough brick wall. He grinned and watched the woman work her way through the bar, staring at every customer, one by one. She was obviously looking for someone. He was the only person in the place by himself – and he wanted to see what happened when she reached his spot. She glanced his way a few times, and it didn’t take long for her to clear the nearest table and look down at him. He willed his face into its most relaxed, nonchalant expression – something he took pride in and had worked on for years.
“Excuse me, but I’ve arranged a meeting here with someone I’ve never seen in person… are you Brett?”
“Why, yes… yes I am. Glad to meet you.” Phoenix had not even had time to think about the lie… it simply came out. And now… nothing to do except go with it. He put on his biggest, broadest smile and reached out his hand toward the woman.
Instead of taking it, she scooted back about half a step and reached into that cavernous bag she carried.
Phoenix had enough time to think, “Oh, that’s why she has such a large purse,” but not much more as the woman’s hand flashed out with a gigantic chrome plated revolver. She raised it and Phoenix’s brain noticed how it gleamed in the uneven light of the bar. He couldn’t do anything else, though. Propped in the chair like that, he was trapped, it would take at least two or three seconds to tip forward and leap one way or the other… but he had less than one.
The gun roared as the woman kept pulling the trigger and slug after slug pumped out and into Phoenix’s chest at point-blank range.
—- from The Smeebage Affair, by Armando Vitalis
Music Video
Filming a Mexican Music Video in Klyde Warren Park.
One of the nice things about living in the big evil city is that – if you keep your eyes open – you can see a lot of interesting things.
While I was walking around downtown I crossed from the crowded west section of Klyde Warren Park over into the less-used eastern part. A small group was filming a Mexican Music Video.
It was not a big operation – a guy playing an acoustic guitar wearing sunglasses and a huge blue fake mohawk. There was a photographer with a tiny handheld camera. An assistant with a boombox on a little cart – this was cranking out a tinny version of the tune so the signer could lip-sync along. There was also a video babe in a tight spandex dress and a bright red wig.
She wasn’t in the shot when I passed by – I imagine she does some wiggling at some point.
Mass Transit
J.G. Ballard wrote a short story named “The Concentration City” (you can read the PDF HERE) about a city that has grown to encompass the entire universe… theoretically and practically – whether it is actually is another question.
The protagonist tries to find the edge of the city, to find “free space” – to find an area where he can build and use a flying machine, by hopping a supersonic express sleeper train and riding it west for weeks.
Unfortunately, he discovers that no matter where you go, there you are.
Here in Dallas – which is shaped sort of like a bulls-eye, with concentric rings of highways and radial connectors – all the trains run out of the center and stop. There is no endless loop. They make you get off the train at the end, before it switches track and heads back in.
Otherwise it would be tempting to get on and never exit. Ride the endless electric rails – watch the city go by, circuit after infinite circuit, the commuters come and go. Everything would slide past forever.
Maybe it’s best that you can’t do that.
(click to enlarge)
[…]
“The surgeon hesitated before opening the door. “Look,” he began to explain sympathetically, “you can’t get out of time, can you? Subjectively it’s a plastic dimension, but whatever you do to yourself you’ll never be able to stop that clock”- he pointed to the one on the desk-“or make it run backward. In exactly the same way you can’t get out of the City.”
“The analogy doesn’t hold,” M. said. He gestured at the walls around them and the lights in the streets outside. “All this was built by us. The question nobody can answer is: what was here before we built it?”
“It’s always been here,” the surgeon said. “Not these particular bricks and girders, but others before them. You accept that time has no beginning and no end. The City is as old as time and continuous with it.”
“The first bricks were laid by someone,” M. insisted. “There was the Foundation.”
“A myth. Only the scientists believe in that, and even they don’t try to make too much of it. Most of them privately admit that the Foundation Stone is nothing more than a superstition. We pay it lip service out of convenience, and because it gives us a sense of tradition. Obviously there can’t have been a first brick. If there was, how can you explain who laid it, and even more difficult, where they came from?”
“There must be free space somewhere,” M. said doggedly. “The City must have bounds.”
“Why?” the surgeon asked. “It can’t be floating in the middle of nowhere. Or is that what you’re trying to believe?”
M. sank back limply. “No”
The surgeon watched M silently for a few minutes and paced back to the desk. “This peculiar fixation of yours puzzles me. You’re caught between what the psychiatrists call paradoxical faces. I suppose you haven’t misinterpreted something you’ve heard about the Wall?”
M. looked up. “Which wall?”
The surgeon nodded to himself. “Some advanced opinion maintains that there’s a wall around the City, through which it’s impossible to penetrate. I don’t pretend to understand the theory myself. It’s far too abstract and sophisticated. Anyway I suspect they’ve confused this Wall with the bricked-up black areas you passed through on the Sleeper. I prefer the accepted view that the City stretches out in all direction without limits.””
[…]
—-The Concentration City (1957). James Graham Ballard. The Complete Short Stories
Bill Chance 