“It’s been a prevalent notion. Fallen sparks. Fragments of vessels broken at the Creation. And someday, somehow, before the end, a gathering back to home. A messenger from the Kingdom, arriving at the last moment. But I tell you there is no such message, no such home — only the millions of last moments . . . nothing more. Our history is an aggregate of last moments.”
― Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
Denton, Texas
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“After supper was over and the toasts had been drunk, the boy Pablo was called in to play for the company while the gentlemen smoked. . . there was softness and languor in the wire strings–but there was also a kind of madness; the recklessness, the call of wild countries which all these men had felt or followed in one way or another. Through clouds of cigar smoke, the scout and the soldiers, the Mexican rancheros and the priests, sat silently watching the bent head and crouching shoulders of the banjo player, and his seesawing yellow hand, which sometimes lost all form and became a mere whirl of matter in motion, like a patch of sand-storm.”
― Willa Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop
Denton, Texas
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“If there is something comforting – religious, if you want – about paranoia, there is still also anti-paranoia, where nothing is connected to anything, a condition not many of us can bear for long.”
― Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
Denton, Texas
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“My brain is only a receiver, in the Universe there is a core from which we obtain knowledge, strength and inspiration. I have not penetrated into the secrets of this core, but I know that it exists.”
― Nikola Tesla
Denton, Texas
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“Then the singing enveloped me. It was furry and resonant, coming from everyone’s very heart. There was no sense of performance or judgment, only that the music was breath and food.”
― Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
Courthouse Pickers
Denton, Texas
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Photo taken turning the weekly Courthouse Pickers – bluegrass jam session every Saturday at the county courthouse, Denton, Texas
I was a really lousy artist as a kid. Too abstract expressionist; or I’d draw a big ram’s head, really messy. I’d never win painting contests. I remember losing to a guy who did a perfect Spiderman.
—-Jean-Michel Basquiat
This last weekend, I dragged myself out of bed… if not exactly very early, then rather earlier than later. I thought of what I needed to do with the rapidly slipping away day and I thought, “I need some miles and some photos.”
So I packed my camera into a handlebar bag and rode to the DART station – intending on taking the next train that pulled in, no matter which direction it was going. The Red Line came first, going south, so I headed downtown.
The day was warming quickly and I didn’t feel very good – so I wasn’t going to be able to get as many miles as I wanted. I rode to Klyde Warren Park and picked up something to eat from a Food Truck, read a book, and rested for a bit. Then I headed to Deep Ellum to see what I could see.
Sometimes, it’s important to be able to trust fate, to follow your nose and see where you end up.
As I crossed Ross I saw someone up on a ladder spray painting a mural on the back wall of a building. I’m a big fan of urban murals but have rarely been able to see one actually being made. The artist was working off a photoshopped photo of the site with the design, taped to the wall. I parked my bike and dug out my camera.
The mural was being painted by an artist from Denton, Eric Mancini. He said he was Velcro-ing some artworks to the building when the owner came out and told him he had been thinking about placing a mural there. Eric was glad to comply.
The mural was a stylized Technicolor portrait of Jean-Michel Basquiat. “You can tell by the hair,” Mancini said.
We chatted a bit about art, about Denton (“Denton has become what Austin thinks it is” – one of my favorite sayings), this and that. “I’ll finish this later today and then do one of my tree paintings on the rest of the wall,” he said. He needed to get painting and I needed to get some more miles so I packed up and rode off – he climbed back up his ladder.
Now, this weekend I’ll go back and take some photos of the finished work. More photos, more miles.
Eric Mancini painting a mural of Jean-Michel Basquiat
Downtown Dallas, Texas
Eric Mancini painting a mural of Jean-Michel Basquiat
Downtown Dallas, Texas
Design for an Eric Mancini mural of Jean-Michel Basquiat
Downtown Dallas, Texas
Eric Mancini painting a mural of Jean-Michel Basquiat
Downtown Dallas, Texas
David Iles, Bolivar
H.O.P. Rabbits
2000 Bronze
Frisco, Texas
A couple months ago, on a bicycle ride up to Denton, I found a cool sculpture – a bronze tornado – called November Devil, by David Iles. As I look from sculptures across the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex (and beyond) I find different works by the same person. In the sculpture garden in Frisco, I found some little bronze rabbits that Iles had done – not as spectacular as a bronze tornado, but nice nonetheless.
H.O.P. Rabbits, by David Iles
H.O.P. Rabbits, by David Iles
—-The sculpture from Denton:
November Devil, David Iles, Denton, Texas
A few more photographs taken of an Airstream Trailer graveyard I stumbled across on a trip to Denton, Texas.
“My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops?”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas
…time is the speed at which the past disappears.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas
“Our lives are not our own. From womb to tomb, we are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas
“I lost my balance when the train pulled away, but a human crumple zone buffered my fall. We stayed like that, half fallen. Diagonal People.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas
“Don’t bemoan your misspent life quite yet. Forgive me for flaunting my experience, but you have no conception of what a misspent life constitutes.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas
I’ve now had this WordPress blog up for two years. I jumped in after a friend of mine, Peggy, started hers.
Of course, I’ve done this before… As best as I can tell, back in the 1990s I was somewhere around the thirteenth blogger on the internet – though this was years before the term “blog” was coined. We called them “online journals” or a “digital diary.” I started writing web pages using notepad and posting them in the five megabytes or so that America Online used to give you. I outgrew that and bought a URL and some web space (from what turned out to be the world’s worst online service provider). For well over a decade I wrote something every day. I had to quit when my kids reached high school and too many people I knew in “real life” started reading the thing. Actually, I didn’t quit – I simply went to paper.
Now, this time around… it’s completely different. I don’t write as much in it (my writing addiction is mostly served by fiction now) and do too much photography. But it is what it is.
Two Years
773 posts
2,667 comments
Days missed – none.
At any rate…
A few weeks ago, Candy and I went up to Denton for the Arts and Jazz festival. The last time we went, a couple years ago, it was way too crowded and we had a tough time parking… so this time, we decided to go earlier and to ride the Denton County Transit Authority A-Train up to Denton. This was a great idea – the train ride was fun and the festival was cool – we headed back before the crowds really began to build.
Denton is a cool city. To a big extent, it is a college town, almost like Austin-lite. I enjoyed the pedestrian and bike-friendly areas around the town square and decided I wanted to go back there with my bicycle.
Looking at Google Maps, I noticed the telltale green line that represented a hike-bike trail that ran from Lake Dallas through Corinth up to Denton – a little more than eight miles. It paralleled the A-Train tracks and I was able to get a good look at it from the train windows. It’s called the Denton Katy Trail – and it looked like a nice bike ride.
So, one Sunday that promised nice weather (and light winds) I decided to pack my camera, drive to Lake Dallas with my road bike and head up the trail to Denton. There, I would wander around a bit, take some photos, and then ride back down.
The start of the Denton Katy trail off of Swisher Road, in Lake Dallas.
The trail was nice – really nice. There is a great feeling of booking along fresh, smooth, level concrete. Not very many people using it – a few walkers from the suburban neighborhoods… I only saw one or two other bicycles. Still, it was fun and an enjoyable ride. Until…
The trail ended.
The sudden end of the Denton Katy Trail
Along the south side of Denton is a loop expressway, the 288 and the trail stopped there. They are building a big new pedestrian bridge over the expressway, and it looks finished… but isn’t.
Now, I know that the bridge is expensive and is being built with the best of intentions. That highway is a barrier – though not an insurmountable one. They do have several intersections with lights – you can cross easily if you wait for a green. Once the bridge is finished, bicyclists and walkers can bypass the highway, walking up and over.
The pedestrian/bicycle bridge over 288 in Denton. It will be nice when it is finished.
And that’s the problem. In separating the bike/pedestrians from the city, you make the trail into a recreational opportunity and take away the integration of human-powered transportation with the life of the city.
Presented with the closed trail, I considered turning around and heading back, but I wanted to get to downtown Denton. I walked my bike through a bit of thick woods lined with empty wine bottles and found myself in back of a huge Big-Box store of some kind. That area all along 288 is a massive expanse of auto-oriented shopping hell, with every chain store imaginable. No sidewalks, no way through, acres and acres of tarmac covered with clouds of exhaust fumes. Not a fun place to fight through on a bicycle.
This is what I am talking about. They can spend millions on a bridge to bypass the life below, but can’t finish the sidewalks. Areas like this are openly hostile to people without cars.
The ironic thing is that there were other people trying to walk through there. You would never see them from a car – but they are there… homeless people, young teenagers, poor students – the shadow population, carless by choice or by situation.
Again, I salute the money and effort put into the trail and that impressive bridge, but fear that the people behind this effort don’t understand the idea of making a city where you don’t have to have a car. I don’t think they can even imagine such a thing.
I was able to work my way through the maze of parking lots and fight past the thick streams of tinted-window SUVs and pickups to finally make my way into the old-fashioned heart of Denton… the area around the square and the roads leading out to the universities. There the cars, walkers, and bikes live together, moving a little more slowly, but getting where they need in plenty of time. It’s funny, the part of the city with the most modern, hip lifestyle… the part that everyone is spending millions of dollars trying to emulate… is the oldest, most “outdated” style of a city square surrounded by narrow streets with limited parking.
That’s the part I like.
Denton, Texas. Denton Arts and Jazz Festival.
The URL on their T-Shirts is www.Cityofdenton/watershed
Bill Chance 