Blog Archives
The Spontaneous Prose Store
I was wandering around, the way I do, taking pictures. I was on 6th Street when I heard the sound of…a typewriter. I can’t say for certain that was the first outdoor typewriter I’d heard, but it may have been.
And there, in front of the Driskill Hotel, I saw it: the Spontaneous Prose Store. The proprietor, Kaile H. Glick, was gracious about letting me take pictures while she wrote on a topic of my choice.
She typed on a label, with a piece of blue carbon paper behind so she can keep a record of her work.
Here’s what she wrote for me:
Be sure to stop by her blog. Oh, and look around – maybe you’ll see her in your town.
Austin, Texas
photographeyd 5.11.2013
Flowers, wind, and sleeplessness
My mom filled up the flower beds in the back yard with irises; there were the usual colors, like yellow or purple, but there were also exotic ones, like black. Or the white variety that had blooms as big as a softball. I loved those flowers.
But they weren’t a match for the kind of wind we have in west Texas, and often their fragile petals would be bruised or torn by the wind. On nights when the wind blew, I’d lie awake, feeling sad for the way I knew the flowers would look in the morning.
I have a few irises now, dug from my mom’s yard. The big white ones started blooming the other day, the day the temperatures were over 90°F. Last night, the wind blew all night, and this morning’s temperature was almost down to freezing.
Also, last night, I was awake almost all night, unable to sleep from some vague worry that I couldn’t quite define. It wasn’t until I was driving to work this morning that I thought about my mom’s irises and my youthful, sleepless nights. And understood why I was awake last night.
Lubbock, Texas
photographed 3.24.2012
Heaven on a Sunday morning
Of course you knew this: that the very instant I first saw this place, which was on a Friday night, I made plans to go back on a Sunday morning just so I could use “Heaven on a Sunday morning” as the title of a blog post.*
As it turns out, heaven isn’t too crowded on Sundays. Just a couple of guys working on repairing the brick street, a man on a bicycle who was shopping the trashcans, and me.
Lubbock, Texas
photographed 4.7.2013
*I realize I could have actually taken this photograph any day of the week and just pretended I took it on a Sunday. But I wouldn’t do that.
The night shop
I was a speaker on the second day of a two-day conference, which required an overnight stay in this town about 100 miles from home. In the afternoon, I’d discovered a really nice coffee shop – Palace Coffee, for those of you keeping score at home. When I left the coffee shop – in time to make it to the conference’s evening activities – I noticed this little place and thought, “I need to come back here later.”
So I did.
Canyon, Texas
photographed 3.20.2013
