Tag Archives: the cedars

There Is A Way To Be Sane

Posted on by Bill Chance

“I’m simply saying that there is a way to be sane. I’m saying that you can get rid of all this insanity created by the past in you. Just by being a simple witness of your thought processes.

It is simply sitting silently, witnessing the thoughts, passing before you. Just witnessing, not interfering not even judging, because the moment you judge you have lost the pure witness. The moment you say “this is good, this is bad,” you have already jumped onto the thought process.

It takes a little time to create a gap between the witness and the mind. Once the gap is there, you are in for a great surprise, that you are not the mind, that you are the witness, a watcher.

And this process of watching is the very alchemy of real religion. Because as you become more and more deeply rooted in witnessing, thoughts start disappearing. You are, but the mind is utterly empty.

That’s the moment of enlightenment. That is the moment that you become for the first time an unconditioned, sane, really free human being.”
― Osho

Sculptures, Clarence Street Art Collective, The Cedars, Dallas, Texas

Oblique Strategy: Mechanicalize something idiosyncratic

I am fascinated and have been studying the intersection of Self Hypnosis, Meditation, and Mindfulness. They are related, of course, but different. I think there is an especial power when the three come together.

If anyone has any thoughts – think them pure and strong, and maybe I’ll pick up some vibrations.

Or better yet, send me an email or leave a comment.
bill(dot)chance57(at)gmail(dot)com

Old Fashions

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.”
—- Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Four Corners Brewery
The Cedars
Dallas, Texas

Oblique Strategy: Remove specifics and convert to ambiguities

A young millennial couple – they live in Uptown, of course. Took an Uber to where I was ( I rode the train and then walked… should have brought my bike).

They seem nice enough.

When I was their age, we were into patched jeans. You would buy a pair of jeans and then sandpaper them until they had the proper holes. The patches were cut from old pairs of jeans and had to be hand-stitched, with big crude looping sutures in a contrasting color of heavy thread, usually yellow. I guess it was all a throw-back… and homage to our simpler ancestors, who lived in a simpler time. Iron-on patches were, of course, no good. I couldn’t sew worth beans, and my stitching was wildly uneven… which was perfect.

Two Kinds of People

Posted on by Bill Chance

I guess there’s just two kinds of people, Miss Sandstone, my kind of people, and assholes. It’s rather obvious which category you fit into.
—-Connie Marble, Pink Flamingos

The Cedars, Dallas, Texas

Not In Good Mental Health

Posted on by Bill Chance

“In their brief time together Slothrop forms the impression that this octopus is not in good mental health, though where’s his basis for comparing?”
― Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow

The Cedars Dallas, Texas

The Cedars
Dallas, Texas

“A giant octopus living way down deep at the bottom of the ocean. It has this tremendously powerful life force, a bunch of long, undulating legs, and it’s heading somewhere, moving through the darkness of the ocean… It takes on all kinds of different shapes—sometimes it’s ‘the nation,’ and sometimes it’s ‘the law,’ and sometimes it takes on shapes that are more difficult and dangerous than that. You can try cutting off its legs, but they just keep growing back. Nobody can kill it. It’s too strong, and it lives too far down in the ocean. Nobody knows where its heart is. What I felt then was a deep terror. And a kind of hopelessness, a feeling that I could never run away from this thing, no matter how far I went. And this creature, this thing doesn’t give a damn that I’m me or you’re you. In its presence, all human beings lose their names and their faces. We all turn into signs, into numbers.”
― Haruki Murakami, After Dark

I Wear the Chain I Forged In Life

Posted on by Bill Chance

“You are fettered,” said Scrooge, trembling. “Tell me why?”
“I wear the chain I forged in life,” replied the Ghost. “I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

Sculpture Jason Mehl The Cedars, Dallas, Texas

Sculpture
Jason Mehl
The Cedars, Dallas, Texas

Jason Mehl

Reaching For Anything That Might Save Her

Posted on by Bill Chance

“She was like a drowning person, flailing, reaching for anything that might save her. Her life was an urgent, desperate struggle to justify her life.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated

(click to enlarge) Sculpture by Jason Mehl, The Cedars, Dallas, Texas

(click to enlarge)
Sculpture by Jason Mehl,
The Cedars, Dallas, Texas

Jason Mehl

Bowman Hot Glass

Posted on by Bill Chance
Bowman Hot Glass

Bowman Hot Glass

After leaving the bicycle swap meet at Community Beer, a friend and I rode our bikes up out of the Dallas Design District, along Lamar through Downtown, and into The Cedars. It was an artists open gallery tour for some of the artists in the Cedars – an event I had been looking forward to.

The showroom at Bowman Hot Glass. A lot of beautiful work here. (click to enlarge)

The showroom at Bowman Hot Glass. A lot of beautiful work here.
(click to enlarge)

Our first stop was at Bowman Hot Glass – a glass studio, showroom, and workshop. The place has a very artistic… almost Santa Fe feel to it. But it is obviously a hard working studio – dedicated to the art of blowing glass. While we visited a two man team were making glass pumpkins.

Bowman Hot Glass offers glass blowing classes – which looks more than a little interesting… more hard work than fun. But that’s a good thing.

Drawing fresh glass. (click to enlarge)

Drawing fresh glass.
(click to enlarge)

Bowman Hot Glass

Bowman Hot Glass

Blowing Glass (click to enlarge)

Blowing Glass
(click to enlarge)

Making a pumpkin at Bowman Hot Glass

Making a pumpkin at Bowman Hot Glass

Putting the stem on the pumpkin. Bowman Hot Glass

Putting the stem on the pumpkin. Bowman Hot Glass