Tag Archives: Photography

A Person Freed Of the Future Has Nothing To Fear

Posted on by Bill Chance

“What could I say? Maybe this: the man hunched over his motorcycle can focus only on the present instant of his flight; he is caught in a fragment of time cut off from both the past and the future; he is wrenched from the continuity of time; he is outside time; in other words, he is in a state of ecstasy; in that state he is unaware of his age, his wife, his children, his worries, and so he has no fear, because the source of fear is in the future, and a person freed of the future has nothing to fear.”

― Milan Kundera, Slowness

Bicycle Drag Race, Dallas, Texas

You Are the World You Have Created

Posted on by Bill Chance

 “You are the world you have created. And when you cease to exist, that world you have created will also cease to exist.”

—-El Jefe, The Counselor

AT&T Plaza, Dallas, Texas

Left Lane Closed

Posted on by Bill Chance

“You’ve lived as a citizen in a great city. Five years or a hundred—what’s the difference? The laws make no distinction.

And to be sent away from it, not by a tyrant or a dishonest judge, but by Nature, who first invited you in—why is that so terrible?

Like the impresario ringing down the curtain on an actor:

“But I’ve only gotten through three acts . . . !”

Yes. This will be a drama in three acts, the length fixed by the power that directed your creation, and now directs your dissolution. Neither was yours to determine.

So make your exit with grace—the same grace shown to you.”
― Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

Wounded, Nic Noblique – Dallas, Texas

The Population of Phantoms Resembling Me Increases

Posted on by Bill Chance

“For I do not exist: there exist but the thousands of mirrors that reflect me. With every acquaintance I make, the population of phantoms resembling me increases. Somewhere they live, somewhere they multiply. I alone do not exist.”

― Vladimir Nabokov

Fort Worth, Texas

98 Bottles of Beer on the Wall

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Isn’t beer the holy libation of sincerity? The potion that dispels all hypocrisy, any charade of fine manners? The drink that does nothing worse than incite its fans to urinate in all innocence, to gain weight in all frankness?”

—-Milan Kundera

Deep Ellum, Texas

The scary thing is, looking at this list, how many of them I have tried. So little time, so many beers.

Cannot Tame That Lawless Stream

Posted on by Bill Chance

“One who knows the Mississippi will promptly aver—not aloud, but to himself—that ten thousand River Commissions, with the mines of the world at their back, cannot tame that lawless stream, cannot curb it or confine it, cannot say to it, Go here, or Go there, and make it obey; cannot save a shore which it has sentenced; cannot bar its path with an obstruction which it will not tear down, dance over, and laugh at.”

― Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

Crescent Park, New Orleans

Floundering in a Mire of Spectacle

Posted on by Bill Chance

“We feared that the music which had given us sustenance was in danger of spiritual starvation. We feared it losing its sense of purpose, we feared it falling into fattened hands, we feared it floundering in a mire of spectacle, finance, and vapid technical complexity. We would call forth in our minds the image of Paul Revere, riding through the American night, petitioning the people to wake up, to take up arms. We too would take up arms, the arms of our generation, the electric guitar and the microphone.”
― Patti Smith, Just Kids

Deep Elllum, Dallas, Texas

I do nothing anymore. I’m reduced to looking at things I once did and regurgitating them, slightly re-edited.

It’s not good enough, but it’s all I got.

Turtles All the Way Down

Posted on by Bill Chance

“A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: “What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.” The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, “What is the tortoise standing on?” “You’re very clever, young man, very clever,” said the old lady. “But it’s turtles all the way down!”
― Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time

Fair Park, Dallas, Texas

The Trouble With Being Poor

Posted on by Bill Chance

“The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all your time.”
― Willem De Kooning

Seated Woman, Willem De Kooning, Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Texas