TSDK No. 87. The Wire Temple
A flaneur amid the unknowable.
The Wire Temple.
Somebody dies tonight.
Dawn of (Wo)man.
One small step.
Sacred text.
High note.
Belle of the ball.
The good life.
London calling.
Don’t look down.
Crystal palace.
Welcome home.
I prefer “gabacho.”
Late bloomer.
Night of the comet.
Before the betrayal.
Founder mode.
Peekaboo.
“I met a traveller from an ancient land…”
Serial killer rest stop.
Full mast.
War is over.
Goodbye cruel world.
Postscript
This was my tenth visit to Houston, though the first without any particular goal in mind. Originally I was going to listen to a Beethoven recital at Jones Hall, but the performer fell ill and the concert was canceled. I received the message before I left Austin, yet decided to go anyway, because what is better than to get lost amid the strip malls, to discover new wrong turns and dead ends, to ride the rings of Saturn? Houston is unknowable and will remain so until the heat death of the universe. And yet, from time to time, I am compelled to grapple with its mysteries. The deeper I go, the less I know. And then I am engulfed.
Yeah, this gets Houston sorta right, surely the surreal stuff. Although I think you're going a little too downbeat, maybe a little too Euro. here. I was initially very antagonistic, but visit often, and have grown to appreciate. A lot -- including the concrete bayous, is weirdly beautiful, too. Maybe more to the point, the place throbs in an almost tropical way. Yeah, stuff gets abandoned, or dies, and something grows over it. The raw vegetation of the place, the dank vigor, hell the often large birds and fish in the bayous. The insane driving, the food, the sweatiness, the multitude of cultures, the incessant building, striving -- very different but NYC in the 20s? Houston is huge and growing, horny adolescent as it were. So next trip, more vigor, more eros. IMAO. Hope our paths cross IRL one of these days.
Houston is an endless feeling of “why stop here?” It’s all the same for miles but that’s where some things hide.
Why is there a full-scale replica of the Alamo on an abandoned corporate headquarters? What goes on in the once great disused malls? Ramshackle 1920s bungalows abut modern 4 story townhouses with astroturfed balconies. The same bayous that routinely turn up unidentified dead have old men fishing like something off the cover of an old blues album.
Cities should be orderly but here is chaos, despair, decay, business, modernity, everything temporarily resisting being pulled down into muck.