“Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real.”
― All the Pretty Horses
Repaired cracked mural, Denton, Texas
Even artworks… no, especially works of art… develop cracks and hopefully will be repaired. Is the art lessened by this? Or does it add a greater dimension, one of time, pain, and disaster – if not avoided, refurbished.
“I like best to have one book in my hand, and a stack of others on the floor beside me, so as to know the supply of poppy and mandragora will not run out before the small hours.”
― The Collected Dorothy Parker
Recycled Books, Denton, Texas (taken a long time ago, obviously)
There was a time when we could go to bookstores. Especially big ol’ huge used bookstores (like Recycled Books) with rooms – a confused labyrinth of passages between towering shelves – that odd quiet of millions of sheets of paper adsorbing the sound – the slight smell of mold and ancient wisdom. I would stand in a place like that (or the library) and feel panic because I would never live long enough to read one percent of this – so much knowledge that I would never possess – haunted by the thought that somewhere in there – in that massive agglomeration – is the one book that would enlighten me and tell me exactly what I need to know and I don’t know enough to find it and wouldn’t know it if I saw it.
It feels like those days are so long in the past – it seemed like we could do anything (except smoke in the elevator) – the memories are fading – will those days ever come back again?
Recycled Books
Denton, Texas
Recycled Books Records CDs
Denton, Texas
(click to enlarge)
Recycled Books, Denton, Texas
“What’s really important here,” I whispered loudly to myself,”is not the big things other people have thought up, but the small things you, yourself have”
― Sputnik Sweetheart
Mural, Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
“Thoreau the “Patron Saint of Swamps” because he enjoyed being in them and writing about them said, “my temple is the swamp… When I would recreate myself, I seek the darkest wood, the thickest and most impenetrable and to the citizen, most dismal, swamp. I enter a swamp as a sacred place, a sanctum sanctorum… I seemed to have reached a new world, so wild a place…far away from human society. What’s the need of visiting far-off mountains and bogs, if a half-hour’s walk will carry me into such wildness and novelty.”
― Walden and Other Writings
Bald Cypress Knees, Waco, Texas
“The Girl With Many Eyes
One day in the park
I had quite a surprise.
I met a girl
who had many eyes.She was really quite pretty
(and also quite shocking!)
and I noticed she had a mouth,
so we ended up talking.We talked about flowers,
and her poetry classes,
and the problems she’d have
if she ever wore glasses.It’s great to know a girl
who has so many eyes,
but you really get wet
when she breaks down and cries.”
―
Tattoo Parlor Window, Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
Laissez les bons temps rouler – from Bishop Arts Mardi Gras Parade – 2013
“Why is geometry often described as “”cold” and “”dry?” One reason lies in its inability to describe the shape of a cloud, a mountain, a coastline, or a tree. Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not circles, and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a straight line.”
― Benoît B. Mandelbrot, The Fractal Geometry of Nature
Union Station, Dallas, Texas
“It’s not yesterday anymore”
―
Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
Morty [to Summer]: Well then get your shit together, get it all together, and put it in a backpack, all your shit, so it’s together.
[pause]
And if you gotta take it somewhere, take it somewhere, you know. Take it to the shit store and sell it, or put it in the shit museum. I don’t care what you do, you just gotta get it together.
[pause]
Get your shit together.
—–Rick and Morty, Big Trouble in Little Sanchez
Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
“The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.”
―
Back in the heady days of the Leaning Tower of Dallas (now, sadly Long Gone) I had to stop by to see the thing up close, commune with a group of people (also, sadly, now long gone) and get my traditional leaning tower of Dallas photo.
Leaning Tower of Dallas, Dallas, Texas
While I was at the fence you see in the photo above, as close to the tower as was allowed, I noticed four objects hanging from cables on the side of the tower. “What the hell are those things?” I asked the people around me.
At first I thought they might be vending machines left behind and hanging by their electrical cords out over the void. That is sort of what they looked like. It looked like glassed in rectangular objects with stuff at the bottom. I imagined a vaporized break area on an upper floor with the vending machines left behind clinging for life against the concrete core. I imagined bags of chips and candy bars hanging out there for the birds and brave squirrels to plunder. I put the telephoto lens on my camera and took a shot.
Mysterious objects on the side of the Leaning Tower of Dallas.
A small group gathered around my camera to look at the mystery on the tiny screen on the back. That gave enough magnification to be sure they weren’t vending machines. At any rate three of them looked exactly the same. I was disappointed.
It’s obvious that they were some sort of electrical things that probably supplied power to the elevator shafts in some way. Relays and capacitors and transformers and such. They are hanging by the stout high-voltage cables that electrical things have attached to them. Still a mystery, but less of a cool one.
“Junk turns the user into a plant. Plants do not feel pain since pain has no function in a stationary organism. Junk is a pain killer. A plant has no libido in the human or animal sense. Junk replaces the sex drive. Seeding is the sex of the plant and the function of opium is to delay seeding.
Perhaps the intense discomfort of withdrawal is the transition from plant back to animal, from a painless, sexless, timeless state back to sex and pain and time, from death back to life.”
― Junky
Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
Bill Chance 