“The places where water comes together with other water. Those places stand out in my mind like holy places.”
― Where Water Comes Together with Other Water: Poems
Galatyn Park Fountain, Richardson, Texas
Water Comes Together With Other Water
Tag Archives: sunset
It Tolls For Thee
No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as any manner of thy friends or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
—-John Donne, Devotions on Emergent Occasions, Meditation XVII
Sunset on the Caribbean, taken what feels like a long, long time ago
If You Believe In Me, I’ll Believe In You
“I always thought they were fabulous monsters!” said the Unicorn. “Is it alive?”
“It can talk,” said Haigha, solemnly.
The Unicorn looked dreamily at Alice, and said, “Talk, child.”
Alice could not help her lips curling up into a smile as she began: “Do you know, I always thought Unicorns were fabulous monsters, too! I never saw one alive before!”
“Well, now that we have seen each other,” said the Unicorn, “if you’ll believe in me, I’ll believe in you. Is that a bargain?”
― Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass
Winged Unicorn, Grapevine, Texas
Pay No Worship to the Garish Sun
“When he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.”
― Romeo and Juliet
Grapevine, Texas
The Color Of Love And Spanish Mysteries
“Soon it got dusk, a grapy dusk, a purple dusk over tangerine groves and long melon fields; the sun the color of pressed grapes, slashed with burgandy red, the fields the color of love and Spanish mysteries.”
― On the Road
Water Tower, Grapevine, Texas
When We Stand Uneasy Before Our Own Childish Thoughts
When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Let God speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent. You are anxious because your path leads away from mother and home. But every step and every day lead you back again to the mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.
A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one’s suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.
So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.”
― Bäume. Betrachtungen und GedichteTree, Huffhines Park, Richardson, Texas, Reflected in water and inverted
Leaving Only Memory
“Precipitate as weather, she appeared from somewhere, then evaporated, leaving only memory.”
― Dance Dance Dance
Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge, during 2015 high water, Dallas, Texas
A Large Drop Of Sun
“A large drop of sun lingered on the horizon and then dripped over and was gone, and the sky was brilliant over the spot where it had gone, and a torn cloud, like a bloody rag, hung over the spot of its going. And dusk crept over the sky from the eastern horizon, and darkness crept over the land from the east.”
― The Grapes of Wrath
Caribbean Sunset
The Soul Of Man Is Audible
The soul of man is audible, not visible. A sound alone betrays the flowing of the eternal fountain, invisible to man!”
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Hyperion
Galatyn Fountain, Richardson, Texas
A Smell Of Ozone Blows Up
A smell of ozone blows up from the Dodgem cars out of the gray steel girderwork along the promenade, along with smells of shellfish on the barrows, and of salt sea. The pebbled beach is crowded with families: shoeless fathers in lounge suits and high white collars, mothers in blouses and skirts startled out of war-long camphor sleep, kids running all over in sunsuits, nappies, rompers, short pants, knee socks, Eton hats. There are ice cream, sweets, Cokes, cockles, oysters and shrimps with salt and sauce. The pinball machines writhe under the handling of fanatical servicemen and their girls, throwing body-english, cursing, groaning as the bright balls drum down the wood obstacle courses through ka-chungs, flashing lights, thudding flippers. The donkeys hee-haw and shit, the children walk in it and their parents scream. Men sag in striped canvas chairs talking business, sports, sex, but most usually politics.
—-Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
Crystal Beach, Texas
Bill Chance 