We’re on a ride to nowhere
Come on inside
Takin’ that ride to nowhere
We’ll take that rideI’m feelin’ okay this mornin’
And you know,
We’re on the road to paradise
Here we go, here we go
—-Talking Heads
Trinity Skyline Trail (east side)
from the Continental Bridge Park
Dallas, Texas
“Are we fallen angels who didn’t want to believe that nothing is nothing and so were born to lose our loved ones and dear friends one by one and finally our own life, to see it proved?”
― Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums
Continental Bridge Park
Dallas, Texas
“Don’t blame you,” said Marvin and counted five hundred and ninety-seven thousand million sheep before falling asleep again a second later.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Stylish bike rider, French Quarter, New Orleans
My Xootr folding bicycle, Trinity River Bottoms, Dallas, Texas
Why is the 1 percent suffering from this peculiar mass delusion? Well, actually, it’s not that hard to understand. Because if you’re reading this article, chances are that you are in the top 1 percent of global income. And chances are also that you really don’t feel like a tycoon.
The cutoff for the global 1 percent starts quite a bit lower than the parochial American version preferred by pundits. I’m on it. So is David Sirota. And if your personal income is higher than $32,500, so are you. The global elite to which you and I belong enjoys fantastic wealth compared to the rest of the world: We have more food, clothes, comfortable housing, electronic gadgets, health care, travel and leisure than almost every other living person, not to mention virtually every human being who has ever lived. We are also mostly privileged to live in societies that offer quite a lot in the way of public amenities, from well-policed streets and clean water, to museums and libraries, to public officials who do their jobs without requiring a hefty bribe. And I haven’t even mentioned the social safety nets our governments provide.
So why don’t we feel like Scrooge McDuck, rolling around in all of our glorious riches? Why do we feel kinda, y’know, middle class?
Because we don’t compare our personal experiences to a Tanzanian subsistence farmer who labors in the hot sun for 12 hours before repairing to his one-room abode for a meal of cornmeal porridge and cabbage. We compare ourselves to other Americans, many of whom, darn them, seem to have much more money than we do.
Es café macerado en ron, posee todas las propiedades organolépticas del ron, pero tiene grado de alcohol
Now this is a blast from the dim, dizzy, foggy past.
B-Cycle Bike Share stand, Fair Park, Dallas, Texas
It has been cold here – but it hasn’t been this cold.
Inherent Vice Looks like it is more Thomas Pynchon than Paul Thomas Anderson. And I thing that is a good thing…..
“Soon it got dusk, a grapy dusk, a purple dusk over tangerine groves and long melon fields; the sun the color of pressed grapes, slashed with burgandy red, the fields the color of love and Spanish mysteries.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road
Painted parking meter and Brooks saddle, Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
“When the spirits are low, when the day appears dark, when work becomes monotonous, when hope hardly seems worth having, just mount a bicycle and go out for a spin down the road, without thought on anything but the ride you are taking.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle
Fixed Gear Bike locked to a parking meter in Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
I think it belongs to the bartender at Pecan Lodge
“There is no intensity of love or feeling that does not involve the risk of crippling hurt. It is a duty to take this risk, to love and feel without defense or reserve.”
― William S. Burroughs
Tuba Christmas, Dallas, Texas
“The power of the machine imposes itself upon us and we can scarcely conceive living bodies without it.”
—-Raymond Duchamp-Villon
Large Horse by Raymond Duchamp-Villon
My favorite sculpture – one I have gazed upon many times in the Nasher Sculpture Center, here in Dallas, is Large Horse by Raymond Duchamp-Villon. I wrote about it more than three years ago.
At the time I said:
I like to stare at it, walk around it. I’ve taken some pictures of it. I would like to take some more.
To me, it’s clear that it is a statue of a horse – but that horse has been morphed into a complex machine, full of pushrods, pistons, and gears. It has an impressive, solid bulk, but feels like it is about to propel itself out through the glass and speed down the street in a blur, smelling of ozone and oil.
It is cast in very dark bronze – almost black. It swallows a lot of the light, but what does escape is subdued by the power and mass of the horse. It shines with dark energy.
The sculptor was a cavalry doctor in World War I and must have had a close relationship, knowledge, and a deep connection with his horses. He chose this animal to convert into a cubist bronze. He was able to preserve the essential horseness of the shape while implying the obsolescence of the animal – overtaken by the more powerful, rugged, and easily controlled energy of machines.
Duchamp-Villon died too young. He contracted typhoid fever during the war. He died before he finished this sculpture. All he left was the finished small scale model. After his death, his famous brother, Marcel Duchamp (Nude Descending a Staircase) finished the job and had the sculpture cast in full-sized bronze.
Thanks.
Large Horse, by Raymond Duchamp-Villon
Over the holidays, I was in Houston to visit my mother and my sister and her family and was pleased to discover another Duchamp-Villon’s Large Horse in the Cullen Sculpture Garden at the Houston Museum of Fine Art.
It was like running into an old friend unexpectedly.
Large Horse, by Raymond Duchamp-Villon, in the Cullen Sculpture Garden, Houston, Texas
“The band played up and down valleys still in those days unknown except to a few real-estate visionaries, little crossroads places where one day houses’d sprawl and the rates of human affliction in all categories zoom.”
― Thomas Pynchon, Vineland
Tuba Christmas, Dallas, Texas
“You’re chicken, she told herself, snapping her seat belt. This is America, you live in it, you let it happen. Let it unfurl.”
― Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49
Bill Chance 