“Purple is such a twisted, complex color – it conveys the passion of red, the sadness of blue, the depravity of black. Purple is neither happy nor sad. It is pain and despair but longing, too – fiery desire, beaten and bruised but struggling onward, determined to overcome, to move forward rather than retreat.”
― James Patterson, Invisible
I remember as a kid having a balloon and accidentally letting the string go and watching it just float off and into the sky until it disappeared. And there’s something about that, even, that feels very much like what life is, you know, that it’s fleeting, and it’s temporal.
—-Pete Docter
Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
“I think if human beings had genuine courage, they’d wear their costumes every day of the year, not just on Halloween. Wouldn’t life be more interesting that way? And now that I think about it, why the heck don’t they? Who made the rule that everybody has to dress like sheep 364 days of the year? Think of all the people you’d meet if they were in costume every day. People would be so much easier to talk to – like talking to dogs. ”
― The Gum Thief
Cosplay, Grapevine, Texas
“Sometimes a writer, like an acrobat, must try a trick that is too much for him.”
― E.B. White
Klyde Warren Park, Dallas, Texas
To get my holiday time off work to an exciting start – I spent a day arranging and organizing my room. I’ve built a new desk and am working on setting it up neatly and efficiently. Part of the work was getting my backup external hard drives out and making sure they work properly. Looking through my old photographs I found this one, part of a set I took years ago at Klyde Warren. I have used other version on the blog before, but felt like playing around with it a bit.
The weather is nice now…. I need to get out.
“Everyone behaves badly–given the chance.”
—-Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
New Orleans
New Orleans
“The voice says, maybe you don’t go to hell for the things you do. Maybe you go to hell for the things you don’t do. The things you don’t finish.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Lullaby
Oblique Strategy: Always first steps
It’s tough being a carhop. You have to remember what car has what order. You have to be able to skate balancing a tray groaning with food and milkshakes. You have to be able to hook in onto the window… just right. You have to endure and handle the nuts and assholes.
The hours are long and the tips are small.
Poor Ethel. The only good thing about being a carhop is that at the end of the day you get to go home. But she doesn’t. She has to stand there, looking as beautiful as ever.
Is beauty its own reward? You exist mainly in the foggy yet electric haloed memories of teenagers long grown old and gray. Is it worth the effort to represent an age long gone by – an era of rollerskates and rootbeer in this age of smartphones and Spice?
Is there an app for that?
“To him she seemed so beautiful, so seductive, so different from ordinary people, that he could not understand why no one was as disturbed as he by the clicking of her heels on the paving stones, why no one else’s heart was wild with the breeze stirred by the sighs of her veils, why everyone did not go mad with the movements of her braid, the flight of her hands, the gold of her laughter. He had not missed a single one of her gestures, not one of the indications of her character, but he did not dare approach her for fear of destroying the spell.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera
Oblique Strategy: Make an exhaustive list of everything you might do and do the last thing on the list
I saw this woman standing in a studio in an art gallery. She was so stunning that it made me ache. When I ran into her again outside, I had to grab a couple photographs.
“The past does not influence me; I influence it.”
― Willem de Kooning
Seated Woman, Willem de Kooning, Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Texas
There is nothing as exhausting as facing your fears – no matter how things turn out. It is so tiring, I’m not sure it’s even worth it.
All of a sudden, as if a surgical hand of destiny had operated on a long-standing blindness with immediate and sensational results, I lift my gaze from my anonymous life to the clear recognition of how I live. And I see that everything I’ve done, thought or been is a species of delusion or madness. I’m amazed by what I managed not to see. I marvel at all that I was and that I now see I’m not.
—-Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet
Deep Ellum Brewing Company, Dallas, Texas
Oblique Strategy: Convert a melodic element into a rhythmic element
I sit there with my camera ready to raise and shoot… waiting for the woman to take another sip of beer. Sitting there waiting with my weapon in my hand, ready to raise and shoot, like a big game hunter… or more like a little kid with a BB gun waiting on a sparrow to land within range.
“What does a mirror look at?”
― Frank Herbert, Chapterhouse: Dune
Deep Ellum Brewing Company
Dallas, Texas
Bill Chance 