“In the empty immensity of earth, sky, and water, there she was, incomprehensible, firing into a continent.”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
Galatyn Park Fountain, Richardson, Texas
Sky and Water
Tag Archives: Texas
Something I’d Never Tasted Before
“It took the mountain top, it seems to me now, to give me the sensation of independence. It was as if I’d discovered something I’d never tasted before in my short life. Or rediscovered it – for I associated it with the taste of water that came out of the well, accompanied with the ring of that long metal sleeve against the sides of the living mountain, as from deep down it was wound up to view brimming and streaming long drops behind it like bright stars on a ribbon. It thrilled me to drink from the common dipper. The coldness, the far, unseen, unheard springs of what was in my mouth now, the iron smell, all said mountain mountain mountain as I swallowed. Every swallow was making me a part of being here, sealing me in place, with my bare feet planted on the mountain and sprinkled with my rapturous spills. What I felt I’d come here to do was something on my own.”
― Eudora Welty, On Writing
Galatyn Park Fountain, Richardson, Texas
The Unfathomable Mystery
“The man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out. He will be wiser but less sure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable mystery which it tries, forever vainly, to comprehend”
― Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception
Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
The Opinion of Sheep
“A lion doesn’t concern itself with the opinion of sheep.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones
Fort Worth, Texas
The Inevitable March of History
“We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done.”
― Alan Turing, Computing machinery and intelligence
Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
A Fountain of Taps
I love creeks and the music they make.
And rills, in glades and meadows, before
they have a chance to become creeks.
I may even love them best of all
for their secrecy. I almost forgot
to say something about the source!
Can anything be more wonderful than a spring?
—-Raymond Carver, Where Water Comes Together with Other Water
The Barley House,
Dallas, Texas
Midnight Swims
“She wore flowers in her hair and carried magic secrets in her eyes. She spoke to no one. She spent hours on the riverbank. She smoked cigarettes and had midnight swims…”
― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things
Mural, Deep Ellum
Dallas, Texas
Minding Your Own Business
“There is nothing more provocative than minding your own business.”
― William S. Burroughs, The Place of Dead Roads
Sightings: Mai-Thu Perret
Nasher Sculpture Center
Dallas, Texas
Impervious to the Psychological Pressures
“A new social type was being created by the apartment building, a cool, unemotional personality impervious to the psychological pressures of high-rise life, with minimal needs for privacy, who thrived like an advanced species of machine in the neutral atmosphere. This was the sort of resident who was content to do nothing but sit in his over-priced apartment, watch television with the sound turned down, and wait for his neighbours to make a mistake.”
― J.G. Ballard, High-Rise
Fort Worth, Texas
Kiss’d Away Before They Fell
“And down I went to fetch my bride:
But, Alice, you were ill at ease;
This dress and that by turns you tried,
Too fearful that you should not please.
I loved you better for your fears,
I knew you could not look but well;
And dews, that would have fall’n in tears,
I kiss’d away before they fell.”
― Alfred Tennyson
Sundance Square, Fort Worth, Texas
Bill Chance 