“Everybody wants to talk about themselves, and everybody wants to hear everybody else’s story, so we take turns playing reporter and celebrity.”
― Ryu Murakami
Piercing
Tag Archives: Texas
Monkeys Minding Machines
“For God’s sake, let us be men
not monkeys minding machines
or sitting with our tails curled
while the machine amuses us, the radio or film or gramophone.Monkeys with a bland grin on our faces.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Selected Letters
I had heard that the new year was going to be bringing cold weather to North Texas. I opened the door this morning to bright sun and surprisingly mild temperatures. Best of all, no wind.
So I decided to go for a little bike ride – my goal was ten miles around the ‘hood. Comfortable in shorts and a T-shirt I packed up a Moleskine and my pack of portable fountain pens along with a thermos of coffee – so I could stop, sip, and write a little… if I found a good spot.
Wandering around my usual route, then a little off I decided to pedal into downtown Richardson. There are massive changes/construction going on there and I wanted to see. I was disappointed – it is all so car-oriented… and the traffic was fast and noisy. After wandering a bit I did find a little pocket park with some white metal picnic tables – a good place to sip my coffee, scribble in the Moleskine, and listen to a podcast on my phone.
The traffic noise was distracting and my Platinum Preppy spit out a gob of purple ink onto my page (as it is wont to do – have to replace it in my rotation) but otherwise everything was right with the world.
But as I wrote I didn’t notice the clouds rolling in, the strengthening wind switching around to the north, and the temperature dropping like a stone. By the time I made it home it was bitchin` cold, maybe close to freezing and the wind was howling.
Texas.
To make matters worse – my goal was ten miles but checking my Strava I had ridden only 9.92. I took the dog out for a walk and made up the difference, but only made it to the end of the block before the cold drove us back home.
Fetch the Duck
“Small men oft feel a need to prove their courage with unseemly boasts,” he declared. “I doubt if he could kill a duck.”
Tyrion shrugged. “Fetch the duck.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons
Bachman Lake, Dallas, Texas
Christmas, Bistro B
“when I left her to-day, she put her arms around me and felt my shoulder blades, to see if my wings were strong, she said. ‘The bird that would soar above the level plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings. It is a sad spectacle to see the weaklings bruised, exhausted, fluttering back to earth.’ ”
― Kate Chopin, The Awakening
Everyone has their traditions. The best traditions, especially the best holiday traditions… are the ones you establish yourselves.
I don’t remember how we started… probably inspired by the ending (after the disaster where the Bumpass’ dogs ate the turkey) of A Christmas Story….
Our Christmas tradition is to eat at Bistro B – a (one of many) Vietnamese restaurant in our city.
I’ve written about it before:
2018 Another Christmas, Another Bowl of Pho
2011 Bistro B on Christmas Day
The other members of my family order various things (the menu at Bistro B is literally a book – the menu items run into the seven hundreds) but I stick to the Pho. Today, I ordered number 37 – the beef and meat ball Pho.
It was too much food. I have been trying to eat less. With most of the broth, most of the noodles, and all of the beef consumed, I was full. But, what the hell… it’s Christmas. I went for it.
There aren’t too many empty bowls left behind at that place.
I felt like I had swallowed a football. The rest of the day… well, it’s a bit of a blur.
We did open presents – not the wild blowout of rending paper as it was when the kids were little.
My son did buy my a cool and interesting gift – Tickets to the January 15th Kansas-West Virginia Basketball game – so we will have a weekend road trip to Lawrence in our future. That should be fun – I’ve only been back once in the last twenty years or so.
Merry Christmas Everyone!
It Cannot be Improved
“The book is like the spoon, scissors, the hammer,
the wheel. Once invented it cannot be improved. You cannot make a spoon
that is better than a spoon”
― Umberto Eco
Stampede
“He stood at the window of the empty cafe and watched the activities in the square and he said that it was good that God kept the truths of life from the young as they were starting out or else they’d have no heart to start at all.”
― Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses
What I See When I Go For A Walk
“Don’t you believe in flying saucers, they ask me? Don’t you believe in telepathy? — in ancient astronauts? — in the Bermuda triangle? — in life after death?
No, I reply. No, no, no, no, and again no.
One person recently, goaded into desperation by the litany of unrelieved negation, burst out “Don’t you believe in anything?”
Yes”, I said. “I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I’ll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be.”
― Isaac Asimov
Over break, I’m working on an addition to my exercise regime. In addition to ten miles a day on the bike (which is usually on my spin bike indoors) I added a minimum two mile walk outside. I increase that a little every day. Sometimes I take my dog with me, sometimes I go alone (the dog is very good on a leash, but holding the thing and not being able to swing my arms cramps my rhythm a bit).
I look for odd things on my walks – here is a strange and wonderful sign I saw today along the paved hike/bike trail.
Pastel Moonrise
“She didn’t quite know what the relationship was between lunatics and the moon, but it must be a strong one, if they used a word like that to describe the insane.”
― Paulo Coelho, Veronika Decides to Die
I slipped out of work an hour early, the sun was just then setting. The moon was rising in the east poking through the thin pastel clouds. A beautiful scene. I took it as a good omen. We’ll see.
Things Which Cannot Inspire Envy
“The pessimist resembles a man who observes with fear and sadness that his wall calendar, from which he daily tears a sheet, grows thinner with each passing day. On the other hand, the person who attacks the problems of life actively is like a man who removes each successive leaf from his calendar and files it neatly and carefully away with its predecessors, after first having jotted down a few diary notes on the back. He can reflect with pride and joy on all the richness set down in these notes, on all the life he has already lived to the fullest. What will it matter to him if he notices that he is growing old? Has he any reason to envy the young people whom he sees, or wax nostalgic over his own lost youth? What reasons has he to envy a young person? For the possibilities that a young person has, the future which is in store for him?
No, thank you,’ he will think. ‘Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past, not only the reality of work done and of love loved, but of sufferings bravely suffered. These sufferings are even the things of which I am most proud, although these are things which cannot inspire envy.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
The Tendency Not To Understand Who We Are
“Bad architecture is in the end as much a failure of psychology as of design. It is an example expressed through materials of the same tendencies which in other domains will lead us to marry the wrong people, choose inappropriate jobs and book unsuccessful holidays: the tendency not to understand who we are and what will satisfy us.”
― Alain de Botton, The Architecture of Happiness
Bill Chance 