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
“Smog hung all round the horizon, the sun on the bright beige countryside was painful; she and the Chevy seemed parked at the centre of an odd, religious instant. As if, on some other frequency, or out of the eye of some whirlwind rotating too slow for her heated skin even to feel the centrifugal coolness of, words were being spoken.”
― Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49
Chapel, Thanksgiving Square, Dallas, Texas
“I am now 33 years old, and it feels like much time has passed and is passing faster and faster every day. Day to day I have to make all sorts of choices about what is good and important and fun, and then I have to live with the forfeiture of all the other options those choices foreclose. And I’m starting to see how as time gains momentum my choices will narrow and their foreclosures multiply exponentially until I arrive at some point on some branch of all life’s sumptuous branching complexity at which I am finally locked in and stuck on one path and time speeds me through stages of stasis and atrophy and decay until I go down for the third time, all struggle for naught, drowned by time. It is dreadful. But since it’s my own choices that’ll lock me in, it seems unavoidable–if I want to be any kind of grownup, I have to make choices and regret foreclosures and try to live with them.”
― David Foster Wallace, A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments
View of the Trinity River and the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge from the Continental Bridge Park, Dallas, Texas
Truck is from Bertrand’s Inc..
“I would hate to be murdered in a lounge chair. You would lose not only your life, but a chance at a nice nap.”
—-Armando Vitalis, From Hell’s Heart I Stab At Thee
Continental Bridge Park,
Dallas, Texas
(click for larger version on Flickr)
I try not to take so many photographs that don’t have people in them. But there aren’t many folks on the Continental Bridge Park on a workday afternoon, even on a preternaturally warm autumn day.
The few people that did walk by as I ate a takeout sweet potato were interesting enough:
A large young man with headphones – he sauntered by and I saw him at a distance once he reached an unoccupied section dancing by himself.
A young couple, very casually dressed, moving around in some sort of elaborate ritual in each open area. I think they were planning a wedding on the bridge – or at least a photo-shoot – and were trying out all the angles.
A couple with two chihuahuas. They passed one way with the dogs on leashes – then returned with the dogs loose. I later saw them chasing the pooches along the Trinity River Levee – they must have seen something interesting.
—-but the bridge is very long and narrow, and the interesting stuff was too far away. So all I did was sit in one of the lounge chairs and read a couple of horrifically gruesome short stories.
For example, in one an astoundingly stupid young man is experimenting with an ethanol-based homemade hair gel when he accidentally ignites his coif with a cigarette. Aflame, he runs into the road in a panic where he is struck by a speeding wrecker. The impact flips him over a rail into the Sabine river, which does serve to extinguish the flames – but before his friends can rescue him a large alligator drags him off by the head.
Things go downhill from there. If you don’t believe me – the story seems to be available online.
“There was something about clowns that was worse than zombies. (Or maybe something that was the same. When you see a zombie, you want to laugh at first. When you see a clown, most people get a little nervous. There’s the pallor and the cakey mortician-style makeup, the shuffling and the untidy hair. But clowns were probably malicious, and they moved fast on those little bicycles and in those little crammed cars. Zombies weren’t much of anything. They didn’t carry musical instruments and they didn’t care whether or not you laughed at them. You always knew what zombies wanted.”
― Kelly Link, The Living Dead
Klyde Warren Park,
Dallas, Texas
“What do you mean, Phib?” asked Miss Squeers, looking in her own little glass, where, like most of us, she saw – not herself, but the reflection of some pleasant image in her own brain.”
― Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby
Klyde Warren Park,
Dallas, Texas
“One swallow does not make a summer,
neither does one fine day;
similarly one day or brief time of happiness does not make a person entirely happy.”
― Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics
Klyde Warren Park
Dallas, Texas
They said it would be the last hot weekend – the end of summer.
The Opening Credits on the screen in Klyde Warren Park
Over the last couple of years, I have seen two simulcasts of the Dallas Opera, both at Cowboy’s Stadium on the giant video screen. First was Turandot and then, a year later, The Barber of Seville. Despite the compromises in seeing an opera in a football stadium – I enjoyed both performances… a lot.
So now, I found out that the Dallas Opera was doing another simulcast on opening night, this time The Marriage of Figaro, and outdoors at Klyde Warren Park, instead of the stadium. This looked great to me, I’m a big fan of Klyde Warren and it’s a sequel to The Barber of Seville. Plus it’s free. Plus I have never seen a Mozart Opera.
I shoved a thick blanket into a backpack and took the DART train downtown after work. I thought of taking my bicycle, but decided to walk it anyway. I hurt my foot (Plantar fasciitis) a couple weeks ago backpacking, but managed to limp my way down to the park. I arrived early, so I was able to stake out some grassy real estate right in front of the giant screen.
As I was waiting I finished reading Tolstoy’s The Kreutzer Sonata. It was interesting to compare the novella with the opera. Although they could not be any different in tone… and of course in the ending, the two shared a lot of theme in ideas of jealousy, the treatment of women, and how love can turn unhappy. Although The Marriage of Figaro is billed as a light farce – a comedic farce – there is deep meaning and sadness concealed under a layer of genius.
The opera was great. The park was a better setting than the stadium – the sound system was so much better. Without the echoing of the vast dome, the sound came through loud and clear.
The start of the third act.
It was also fun watching all the other people at the park. Most arrived in big groups with packs full of tupperware containers bulging with food and coolers of wine. As they drank and ate – the behavior on the lawn became as slapstick as the ones on the screen.
The crowd behind me at The Marriage of Figaro at Klyde Warren Park
They said there were four thousand people watching the simulcast.
The only problem was one of time and comfort. I arrived at the park at five o’clock and the opera ended around midnight. That means I was stuck on a blanket in the grass for seven hours. That’s too long – I’m too old for that. I was awfully sore when I rode the train back home in the wee early hours.
And I, to whom so great a vision was given in my youth, — you see me now a pitiful old man who has done nothing, for the nation’s hoop is broken and scattered. There is no center any longer, and the sacred tree is dead.
—-Black Elk, from Black Elk Speaks
Keeper of the Plains sculpture, Wichita, Kansas
“I don’t want realism. I want magic! Yes, yes, magic! I try to give that to people. I misrepresent things to them. I don’t tell the truth, I tell what ought to be the truth. And it that’s sinful, then let me be damned for it!”
― Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire
Hunt Headquarters Building, Dallas, Texas
Agave, Fountain, Cypress, and Streetcar.
There are hidden treasures in a modern city. They put little pockets of nature and beauty in the center of all the miles and acres of concrete, tarmac, and steel. Seek them out.
Bill Chance 