Texas Star, Fair Park, Dallas, Texas
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“A Boat
O beautiful
was the werewolf
in his evil forest.
We took him
to the carnival
and he started
crying
when he saw
the Ferris wheel.
Electric
green and red tears
flowed down
his furry cheeks.
He looked
like a boat
out on the dark
water.”
― Richard Brautigan
A pond in Fair Park.
From Aurora Dallas 2013
Performance art is about joy, about making something that’s so full of kind of a wild joy that you really can’t put into words.
—-Laurie Anderson
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Dallas Arts District, during a Patio Sessions Concert
“Almost nobody dances sober, unless they happen to be insane.”
― H.P. Lovecraft
From Aurora Dallas 2013
“Actually, I do happen to resemble a hallucination. Kindly note my silhouette in the moonlight.” The cat climbed into the shaft of moonlight and wanted to keep talking but was asked to be quiet. “Very well, I shall be silent,” he replied, “I shall be a silent hallucination.”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita
From Aurora Dallas
From Aurora Dallas
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Wendy let me in I wanna be your friend
I want to guard your dreams and visions
Just wrap your legs round these velvet rims
And strap your hands across my engines
Together we could break this trap
Well run till we drop, baby we’ll never go back
Will you walk with me out on the wire
`cause baby Im just a scared and lonely rider
But I gotta know how it feels
I want to know if love is wild girl, I want to know if love is real
—-Springsteen, Born to Run
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Irving Arts Center, Irving, Texas
Larry Whiteley
Dwelling, 2005
Painted Steel
Irving artist Larry Whiteley makes flowers and more from steel
Larry Whiteley, Dwelling
Larry Whiteley, Dwelling
Behind Dwelling, you can see Star Flower, by James Surls.
Today was an event I was looking forward to, the Dallas 2013 Tweed Ride.
I had what was, I guess, the bare minimum – a tweed jacket from Goodwill and a tweed cap a friend had found on Amazon. So I was ready, if only minimally so.
The ride was originally scheduled for a week ago, but had to be postponed because of the ice storm. The weather was impossible that day, but it was pretty cold today – low forties, overcast, foggy, with a wicked north wind screaming in like a wave of icy razor blades. The last tweed ride – two years ago – was on a preternaturally warm day and had a huge turnout. Today looked like the opposite. I had to think hard about whether I wanted to go. It was nasty outside and the house was warm. I had plenty to do at home.
I futzed and dutzed and prepared as best I could. I decided to ride my commuter bike, and strap on as much crap as I thought I needed onto it. One pannier was packed with my camera and tripod and the other one I filled with two vacuum bottles of hot coffee. I also filled a small flask with some rum, just in case.
Though it wasn’t authentic, I wore a modern thermal vest under my jacket – hoping to keep my core warm.
And I set out to ride my bike to the DART station. As I turned north into the wind, at the end of my block, I decided to turn around and go home. I was out of breath – since the ice storm I’ve been hanging around and am not used to riding… I felt ridiculous in my silly getup. But most of all, the cutting cold wind made riding simply too miserable.
But then I thought about how decisions about giving up go down. The problem is; the pain, the uncomfortable cold, and the icy wind are all too obvious negatives… while the positives of actually braving the elements were out there in the uncertain future, and not for sure. How do you judge the merit of something that you don’t actually do? If you give in to the immediately uncomfortable and reject the possible future… you won’t get out of bed in the morning.
So I sucked it up and pedaled on. As I rode toward the train station, I noticed the clouds breaking up to the north and by the time I reached it the sun was actually breaking through the clouds, and the vicious wind began to break. I bought my pass and the transit gods sent a train in at the exact second I arrived on the platform (that is rare – I’m usually cursed and get to see my train leaving as I pull up – and have to wait).
The ride started by the Grassy Knoll at Dealey Plaza in Downtown Dallas, behind the famous wooden fence. I had thought that the interest in the assassination site would die down after the recent fiftieth anniversary, but there was a huge crowd of tourists wandering around… looking askance at the small crowd of people wearing odd clothing, standing around with a motley collection of bicycles, and shivering.
The crowd wasn’t huge – the cold and the postponement had taken its toll – but there was enough. We set out and rode through downtown, looping past Klyde Warren Park for photographs, and then down Main Street – past the Dallas Eye – and across the Jefferson Viaduct Cycletrack into Oak Cliff.
About two weeks ago, some folks and I had spent a few hours sweeping the track clean. Unfortunately, the ice storm had forced the city to sand the bridge heavily and the traffic had pushed a lot of sand and rock into the bicycle lanes – making our work worthless and the track difficult and dangerous. I took my time crossing – I didn’t want to ride fast through that slippery gravel, but the sun was still out and the view was really nice.
We rode into Oak Cliff, through Bishop Arts and on to the Turner House, where there were refreshments and photographs. We couldn’t stay too long – it was a long way from home, so I rode back across the river and caught the train downtown.
The temperature dropped after the sun went down and the ride home from the station was very cold… but bearable.
Tweed is warmer than you think.
The Tweed Ride posing in Klyde Warren Park
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Dallas Observer Article and Photos of the ride
Charming Portraits of People With Their Bicycles at the Dallas Tweed Ride
Tell her to find me an acre of land
(On the side of a hill, a sprinkling of leaves)
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme
(Washes the ground with so many tears)
Between the salt water and the sea strand
(A soldier cleans and polishes a gun)
Then she’ll be a true love of mine
—-Scarborough Fair/Canticle P. Simon/A. Garfunkel, 1966
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There was a sound like that of the gentle closing of a portal as big as the sky, the great door of heaven being closed softly. It was a grand AH-WHOOM. I opened my eyes – and all the sea was ice-nine. The moist green earth was a blue-white pearl. The sky darkened. … [T]he sun became a sickly yellow ball, tiny and cruel. The sky was filled with worms. The worms were tornadoes.
—-Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut
“No mistake about it. Ice is cold; roses are red; I’m in love. And this love is about to carry me off somewhere. The current’s too overpowering; I don’t have any choice. It may very well be a special place, some place I’ve never seen before. Danger may be lurking there, something that may end up wounding me deeply, fatally. I might end up losing everything. But there’s no turning back. I can only go with the flow. Even if it means I’ll be burned up, gone forever.”
― Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart
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My old chainsaw quit working a year ago, so we had to go down to the hardware store and buy a new one. I was afraid they would be out of stock – a lot of people around here must be buying them right now – but they had two left. We bought the smallest, least expensive, least powerful, corded electric one. It’s only for trimming and, like now, clearing fallen limbs – not a lumberyard – plus, the smaller the saw… the safer the saw (in my opinion).
It was cold work, but quick work, to cut up the limbs of the red oak in the front yard and move them to the curb. It took a little more time to chop up the thicker pieces into chiminea sized chunks of firewood, but waste not want not.
Actually, our old chiminea has bit the dust too, so we need to get down to Amigos Pottery and buy a new one. This is the season of renewal – new chainsaw, new chiminea to burn the old limbs while we wait for the new ones to grow back. It is a shock to see how much wood the weight of the ice tore off the tree – there are still some detached limbs suspended high up, waiting for a thaw and a good breeze to fall – but there are a lot left and the old tree keeps growing.
“Maybe it’s wrong when we remember breakthroughs to our own being as something that occurs in discrete, extraordinary moments. Maybe falling in love, the piercing knowledge that we ourselves will someday die, and the love of snow are in reality not some sudden events; maybe they were always present. Maybe they never completely vanish, either.”
― Peter Høeg, Smilla’s Sense of Snow
The trees that still had their leaves, mostly oaks, were the ones to suffer the most.
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I read on facebook where somebody here in Dallas wrote, under a nice bright picture of downtown, “I remember when it was sunny and eighty degrees… wait, that was yesterday.”
The freezing rain blew in overnight, coating everything in a transparent crystalline shell. I bundled up, breathed the bitter clean air, and carefully walked around the familiar landscape of my yard – transformed into an alien arctic spectacle. When the breeze would blow the world would tinkle with tiny crackling ice. The sun was behind thin clouds but enough light shone through to light up the glassy ice crystals like myriad clear jewels strung everywhere.
We have a huge oak tree in our front yard. Overnight, I could hear wood splitting as the tons of frozen water dripping down the still-attached leaves weighted the wood past its breaking point. In the morning, the yard was littered with limbs, with more broken ones suspended overhead, still stuck in the thick canopy. I’ll have to wait a day or so and then cut the fallen limbs up for firewood and haul the rest to the curb for the city to pick up.
A guy was wandering the neighborhood looking for work – he offered to clear the fall for twenty bucks, which is a more than fair price. I said no… and I’m not sure why, but I think I want to do it myself.
Bill Chance 