“I must have flowers, always, and always.”
― Claude Monet
Dallas Blooms, Dallas Arboretum
A Pansy Peeking Out From the Tulips
Tag Archives: Dallas
Digitalis
O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell,
Let it not be among the jumbled heap
Of murky buildings: climb with me the steep,–
Nature’s observatory–whence the dell,
In flowery slopes, its river’s crystal swell,
May seem a span; let me thy vigils keep
‘Mongst boughs pavilion’d, where the deer’s swift leap
Startles the wild bee from the foxglove bell.
—-John Keats
Digitalis (Foxglove) Dallas Arboretum
Run Out Of Gas
“The American Dream has run out of gas. The car has stopped. It no longer supplies the world with its images, its dreams, its fantasies. No more. It’s over. It supplies the world with its nightmares now: the Kennedy assassination, Watergate, Vietnam…”
― J.G. Ballard
Invasion Car Show, Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
The Opinion Of Sheep
“A lion doesn’t concern itself with the opinion of sheep.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones
Dallas Arboretum
In the Eye Of the Beholder
In the vast whirlwind where the whole world listlessly turns like so many dry leaves, kingdoms count no more than the dresses of seamstresses, and the pigtails of blonde girls go round in the same mortal whirl as the sceptres that stood for empires.
—-Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet
Dallas Zoo
Hotness is in the eye of the beholder. Maybe something as simple as a generous application of a bronzer.
Dallas Zoo
Dallas Zoo
Dallas Zoo
One Space Forward, Two To the Side
“It was like when you make a move in chess and just as you take your finger off the piece, you see the mistake you’ve made, and there’s this panic because you don’t know yet the scale of disaster you’ve left yourself open to.”
—- Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go
Black Knight, Dallas Arboretum
I was a strong chess player when I was young – but I had to quit. Since chess has no randomness, there were no excuses. I took it too seriously and it gave me nasty headaches.
Wrapped
A man who is willing to accept responsibility is always loaded down with more and more of it, because there aren’t that many men around who will accept responsibility.
—-Fernando Pessoa The Book of Disquiet
Dallas Arboretum
Dallas Arboretum
Dallas Arboretum
I Should Have Used the Valet Parking
“My point is that life on earth can take care of itself. In the thinking of a human being, a hundred years in a long time. A hundred years ago, we didn’t have cars and airplanes and computers and vaccines…It was a whole different world. But to the earth, a hundred years is *nothing*. A million years is *nothing*. This planet lives and breathes on a much vaster scale. We can’t imagine its slow and powerful rhythms, and we haven’t got the humility to try. We have been residents here for the blink of an eye. If we are gone tomorrow, the earth will not miss us.”
—- Michael Crichton, Jurassic ParkDallas Zoo
A Fellow of Infinite Jest
Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy; he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? Your gambols? Your songs? Your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar?
—-Shakespeare, Hamlet, V.i
Shakespeare Sculpture, Dallas Arboretum
Phosphorescent Squid
“The soft black talc blew through the streets like squid ink uncoiling along a sea floor and the cold crept down and the dark came early and the scavengers passing down the steep canyons with their torches trod silky holes in the drifted ash that closed behind them silently as eyes.”
—- Cormac McCarthy, The Road
Dallas Zoo
There were some rare phosphorescent squid on display at the Dallas Zoo in the tunnel under the DART rail tracks. The poor creatures were hung on racks, strung up with monofilament fishline and flimsy hollow plastic poles. Their huge eyes, used to the inky blackness of the Stygian depths, stared featureless out at the crowd… at the children who screamed and taunted them.
“I WANT one Daddy!” they yelled. Apparently, desperate for funds in this day of official austerity, the zoo is actually hawking these fellows, to raise a needed buck or two.
The brats danced their frenzied waltz of greed in a rough circle around the squid while their procreators stood, horrified, trying to defend their wallets. I could bear no more of this scene and walked on to view some pachyderms.
Later in the day, as I was leaving, I spotted a limp, disconsolate squid being shoved into an open trunk door. It phosphorescent glow all but extinguished doomed to a long uncomfortable trip and a short demeaning captive life after.
I saluted the poor, hopeless beast and turned to board my train.
Bill Chance 