“But I am greedy for life. I do too much of everything all the time. Suddenly one day my heart will fail. The Iron Crab will get me as it got my father. But I am not afraid of The Crab. At least I shall have died from an honourable disease. Perhaps they will put on my tombstone. ‘This Man Died from Living Too Much’.”
― Ian Fleming, From Russia With Love
Plano, Texas
“Rumour is a pipe
Blown by surmises, jealousies, conjectures
And of so easy and so plain a stop
That the blunt monster with uncounted heads,
The still-discordant wavering multitude,
Can play upon it.”― William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 2
Plano, Texas
“I couldn’t forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Polo Sculpture
Plano, Texas
“Strange how one person can saturate a room with vitality, with excitement. Then there are others, and this dame was one of them, who can drain off energy and joy, can suck pleasure dry and get no sustenance from it. Such people spread a grayness in the air about them.”
― John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America
Plano, Texas
Sometimes you can find interest, maybe beauty, in the simplest and most ordinary of things.
“I have said that Texas is a state of mind, but I think it is more than that. It is a mystique closely approximating a religion. And this is true to the extent that people either passionately love Texas or passionately hate it and, as in other religions, few people dare to inspect it for fear of losing their bearings in mystery or paradox. But I think there will be little quarrel with my feeling that Texas is one thing. For all its enormous range of space, climate, and physical appearance, and for all the internal squabbles, contentions, and strivings, Texas has a tight cohesiveness perhaps stronger than any other section of America. Rich, poor, Panhandle, Gulf, city, country, Texas is the obsession, the proper study, and the passionate possession of all Texans.”
― John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America
Memorial Park
Plano, Texas
“He walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like ground-foxes in their cover. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road
Plano, Texas
“He saw very clearly how all his life led only to this moment and all after led to nowhere at all. He felt something cold and soulless enter him like another being and he imagined that it smiled malignly and he had no reason to believe that it would ever leave.”
― Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses
Plano, Texas
“They had spent a year in France for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Plano, Texas
Watching girls go passing by it ain’t the latest thing
I’m just standing in a doorway.
I’m just trying to make some sense.
Out of these girls passing by, the tales they tell of men.
I’m not waiting on a lady, I’m just waiting on a friend. Mm.A smile relieves a heart that grieves, remember what I said.
I’m not waiting on a lady, I’m just waiting on a friend.
—-Waiting on a Friend, Rolling Stones
Plano, Texas
Dr. Peter Venkman: This city is headed for a disaster of biblical proportions.
Mayor: What do you mean, “biblical”?
Dr Ray Stantz: What he means is Old Testament, Mr. Mayor, real wrath of God type stuff.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Exactly.
Dr Ray Stantz: Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling!
Dr. Egon Spengler: Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes…
Winston Zeddemore: The dead rising from the grave!
Dr. Peter Venkman: Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together… mass hysteria!
Mayor: All right, all right! I get the point!
—-Ghostbusters
Companions
Oscar Alvarado
Plano Animal Shelter
Plano, Texas
When I drive to Plano I often pass by this odd sculpture – a three dimensional mosaic of a dog and cat. It was easy to find out what it was – “Companions,” a mosaic-tiled sculpture depicting a cat nuzzling up to an affectionate dog by San Antonio artist Oscar Alvarado in front of the Plano Animal Shelter. Both pets have collars and tags and there is even a microchip implanted into the mortar of each animal to highlight the importance of identification for all animals.
I wanted to take some photos of the sculpture so I pulled over and stepped out. Immediately the triple digit Texas heat hit me like an open oven door – I think it was about 106 F. Snap Snap Snap and back in the steel-lined air conditioned envelope of my vehicle. In Texas, AC is more important than brakes.
Companions
Oscar Alvarado
Plano Animal Shelter
Plano, Texas
Companions
Oscar Alvarado
Plano Animal Shelter
Plano, Texas
Companions
Oscar Alvarado
Plano Animal Shelter
Plano, Texas
Bill Chance 