Tag Archives: Texas

Much Time Has Passed And Is Passing Faster And Faster Every Day

Posted on by Bill Chance

“I am now 33 years old, and it feels like much time has passed and is passing faster and faster every day. Day to day I have to make all sorts of choices about what is good and important and fun, and then I have to live with the forfeiture of all the other options those choices foreclose. And I’m starting to see how as time gains momentum my choices will narrow and their foreclosures multiply exponentially until I arrive at some point on some branch of all life’s sumptuous branching complexity at which I am finally locked in and stuck on one path and time speeds me through stages of stasis and atrophy and decay until I go down for the third time, all struggle for naught, drowned by time. It is dreadful. But since it’s my own choices that’ll lock me in, it seems unavoidable–if I want to be any kind of grownup, I have to make choices and regret foreclosures and try to live with them.”
― David Foster Wallace, A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments

Bicycle Drag Race, Continental Bridge Park, Dallas, Texas

Bicycle Drag Race, Continental Bridge Park, Dallas, Texas

All Is Sweetness And Delicacy And Harmony

Posted on by Bill Chance

“A sandwich and a cup of coffee, and then off to violin-land, where all is sweetness and delicacy and harmony.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

fiddle

I visited the Frisco Heritage Center during one of their open house events and stumbled across a fiddle player in the Lebanon Baptist Church. She explained that she played three styles of fiddle: Texas Style, Bluegrass, and Old-Timey. Then she would world her way through examples of each. She was very good and the atmosphere in the beautifully-restored old church was special – I really enjoyed listening to her play.

The Nights Will Flame With Fire

Posted on by Bill Chance

“If you’re going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don’t even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery–isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you’ll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you’re going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It’s the only good fight there is.”
― Charles Bukowski, Factotum

Frisco Heritage Center, Frisco, Texas

Frisco Heritage Center, Frisco, Texas

To Enlist the Confidences Of Madmen

Posted on by Bill Chance

“I believe in the power of the imagination to remake the world, to release the truth within us, to hold back the night, to transcend death, to charm motorways, to ingratiate ourselves with birds, to enlist the confidences of madmen.”
― J.G. Ballard

The Horseshoe, Under Construction, Dallas, Texas

The Horseshoe, Under Construction, Dallas, Texas

Fade Surprisingly Quickly

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Memories, even your most precious ones, fade surprisingly quickly. But I don’t go along with that. The memories I value most, I don’t ever see them fading.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

Mural, Fair Park Dallas, Texas

Mural, Fair Park
Dallas, Texas

I have always loved the Art Deco Murals along the Esplanade in Fair Park. I think they are among the many unappreciated public artworks in the city. The ones along the southern side have been beautifully restored.

However, the murals on the North Side – exposed to the southern sun – are very faded and in need of loving care (and very hard to photograph). I hope they get some, they are just as gorgeous as the others.

Mural, Fair Park Dallas, Texas

Mural, Fair Park
Dallas, Texas

All Things Were Older Than Man

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Design District Dallas, Texas

Design District
Dallas, Texas

To Be Really Greek One Should Have No Clothes

Posted on by Bill Chance

“To be really mediæval one should have no body. To be really modern one should have no soul. To be really Greek one should have no clothes.”
― Oscar Wilde, Complete Works of Oscar Wilde

Houston Museum Of Fine Arts

Houston Museum Of Fine Arts

Teach Him What He Does Not Want To Learn

Posted on by Bill Chance

“A responsible Warrior is not someone who takes the weight of the world on his shoulders, but someone who has learned to deal with the challenges of the moment.”
― Paulo Coelho, Warrior of the Light

Design District Dallas, Texas

Design District
Dallas, Texas

“The Warrior knows that no man is an island.
He cannot fight alone; whatever his plan, he depends on other people. He needs to discuss his strategy, to ask for help, and, in moments of relaxation, to have someone with whom he can sit by the fire, someone he can regale with tales of battle.”

“Then the Warrior realizes that these repeated experiences have but one aim: to teach him what he does not want to learn.”
― Paulo Coelho, Warrior of the Light

Close Only Counts

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades”
—-Traditional

Across and down the street a little ways from our front door the city, a couple of years ago, took a little-used piece of land and built a whole bunch of horseshoe pits there – giving each one a number. The land is still little-used, but once or twice a year a tournament arrives and horseshoe pitchers crowd in and do their thing. Usually portable lighting trailers are brought in and they pitch well into the darkness.

The rest of the year it sits their unused, fenced off, locked up, empty and forlorn. The little sign proclaims “PIT #11” – if anyone other than me ever looks.

Pit 11 Huffhines Park Richardson, Texas

Pit 11
Huffhines Park
Richardson, Texas