"Windows," Written for SPARK
My family never flies.
We’re the road trip type. The camping and eating freeze dried spaghetti kind of family. We drive for hours and hours on end, and I rotate between scrolling on my phone and staring out the window as one version of White Sands blurs into the next, on and on and on. The landscape seems to unfold endlessly—it feels like we’re making no progress.
There are 473k more pictures under #whitesands. I guess we aren’t.
***
For about 95% of our species’ existence, we survived as hunter-gatherers, in tune with the natural world. We knew we were at the mercy of nature’s order, and calculated our every action accordingly. We followed the ebb and flow of the seasons, navigating the land with the intent to survive—just as other species did.
At some point, some luck-of-the-draw combination of factors (a shift in environmental patterns, a larger brain, and a big toe, perhaps?) allowed for the development of agriculture, and from there, our relationship with nature changed. It was no longer something we were both a part of and subject to. We could interrupt the natural seed dispersal process to get more wheat! We could fence up a group of pigs to have readily-available meat! Nature became something to dominate, something to control to fulfill our needs.
As mud villages turned into concrete cities and human labor turned into machine, the same regard for nature that enabled our mastery of agriculture sowed the seeds of capitalism. Our wheat dispersal hack is now a billion-dollar fertilizer industry. Our pig pen is a trillion-dollar meat market. From the comfort of our leather desk chairs in our glass high-rises, we’ve cemented our role as nature’s puppeteer, and in doing so, we’ve sucked the life out of Earth’s soil and ripped apart its atmosphere.
Yet, somewhere deep within our psyche, we know we’re missing something. Somewhere not yet poisoned by the gospel of economic growth, our primordial affiliation with nature survives.
So, to recreate what we have destroyed, we turn to technology. “Digital nature.” Virtual reality is on the rise. Video games featuring mythical woods and majestic mountains are more popular than ever. We can experience an outdoor run via an indoor treadmill. We can explore pristine beaches and luscious forests via #nature.
And the best part? We get to create it all ourselves. With cameras and desktops that offer the newest and greatest computational abilities, we can make digital nature just like the real, physical thing.
But when we watch hiking vlogs or experience virtual reality, we can only see the river flow and the trees sway. We do not feel the wind or smell the soil. We hear the sky thunder and the bushes rustle. But we don’t have to listen, because we aren’t worried about a storm approaching or a bear lurking around the corner. We know we aren’t at the mercy of the nature we experience because we created it all — it's under our control.
And that’s the problem. Inherent to nature is the process of living in relation with the other, not in domination over it. Digital nature, as a human creation—a product of our utmost control—is not the same. It doesn’t even come close. Its very existence is contradictory to nature itself.
Our attempt to recreate what we have destroyed is not only futile—it’s destructive. Digital nature is an extension of the exact phenomenon that elicited its necessity.
***
Smooth mounds of white gypsum blend into the painterly sky. The half-shrouded sun creates a soft glow over the deep blue mountains.
My vision goes black for 1/2000 of a second. There is a loading icon, then the photo I have taken reveals itself.
It’s just what I had envisioned. Better, even, compared to the ones I’ve seen. It’ll be the perfect cover for my White Sands post.
I lower my camera, and my eyes are flooded with light. My forehead is hot—maybe burnt. I recoil. I forget I am standing, completely exposed, in the middle of the desert.
And the desert is much bigger than it was through my lens: the mountain range wraps around me and there is a cottonwood tree to my left.
I blink. The wind picks up again, and silence fades into song, stillness into waltz. The sand hisses in dissent as it is strewn about by the wind, the birds flutter in harmony as they too are carried along. Even the clouds are swept away, and as the sun spills onto the desert floor, the lizards and mice emerge from their burrows. My senses are heightened as the desert comes alive, my skin tingles as the sun and wind and sand caress my body all at once, and something inside is pulled outwards—something under my skin yearns to break free and fuse into the life around me.
But it can’t. It’s tied down by the strap around my neck.
Suddenly, my camera weighs a thousand pounds. I have the urge to yank it off my body and throw it down the dune, watch it roll and roll until it is buried in the sand and the elements begin to break it down—the glass back into sand, the metal back into sediment. I wonder how it would feel to be here with no motive but to sit and soak up the way the wind tangles my hair and the sand tickles my skin—no preconception based off of the hundreds of photos and videos I’ve seen, no future Instagram post in the back of my mind. I wonder how it would feel to look at that cottonwood and see something that is just as alive as I am, that has veins and capillaries just as I do.
But I can only wonder. Because as soon as I saw the cottonwood, I deemed it an eye-sore: it didn’t match the way I expected White Sands to look, nor the way I wanted it to.
So I cropped it out.
I felt something yesterday that I have not felt before, and that is solace in the shrouding of the sun. Had the world been flushed with light, it would have been gaudy. It would have felt like a slap in the face.
Humans crave empathy, and when we, inside, are nothing but desolate, what good can be found in color? What good can be found in the vibrancy of everything but ourselves?
"Stories of Stories: Why there's Why there’s a marquee on the CVS building," Written for The Daily Texan
The next time you cross Guadalupe on 24th, look closely.
A red and green marquee adorns the building on the northwest corner, flashing bright against the night. Students, emptying their pockets of the money they’ve saved for weeks, buzz with excitement as streetcars rattle by. The air smells of butter-slathered popcorn and brand new velvet seats.
The year is 1936, and Varsity Theater welcomes its first guests.
It will be 54 years before the theater becomes a symbol of The Drag’s transience, transforming into a Tower Records, bookstore, restaurant and finally, a CVS. As the neighborhood continues to make itself anew, the distinctively Art Deco building survives as one of the few physical reminders of the past.
Jim Nicar, founder of The UT History Corner, said The Varsity Theater prevailed against odds during the Great Depression.
“Opening a theater seems kind of chancy …, when people can’t really afford to go see movies,” Nicar said. “I wonder what film tickets cost, as they might have been considered a luxury for students watching every penny.”
Despite the Depression, the Varsity thrived in its early years, Nicar said. Soon enough, it began to attract more than moviegoers, becoming a venue for fashion shows, town halls and Greek life socials.
During the Civil Rights Movement, the theater, which at the time only admitted white patrons, made headlines as the site of one of the nation’s first stand-ins. According to a research article by Nicar, demonstrators would line up to ask if the theater was open to all, drawing attention to segregation and slowing ticketing. The Varsity soon integrated, and within a year, most of The Drag had followed.
However, with the rise of VHS tapes in the 1970s, the theater faced difficulties attracting patrons. In the 1980s, it became a "dollar theater” — $1 admission to see previously released films — and the upper lever closed so that two films could show concurrently.
One of the last films screened at The Varsity was 1989’s “Dead Poets Society.” Nicar said the film’s popularity prompted it to run for almost six months, inspiring UT students to form their own Dead Poets Society.
“It was very inspiring, people loved Robin Williams. People (were) wondering, ‘Hey, Professor, why aren’t you as good as this guy on the bill?” Nicar said. “I saw (the movie) at least once, maybe twice …, we kept going to see it and it would be a full house.”
Alumnus Eric Chang, who attended UT during the theater’s last years and graduated in 1993, said he remembers watching “Casablanca” with his friend.
“I think it was the first time I went to a theater like that …, (with) the red velvet seats and the old 1930s feel on the inside. It really left an impression,” Chang said. “When they turned it into a Tower Records, they completely gutted the place …, I remember how big of a cavity there was, how empty it felt.”
Unable to keep up with rising rent and dwindling patrons, the theater closed in 1990. But as years have passed, the Varsity marquee – though not the original – still stands.
“We were sad to see (the theater) go because it had been an institution on The Drag for so long,” Nicar said. “It was special to a lot of people, that's why you still see the sign there. That's why you still see Varsity.”
I never took pride in living in Dallas—it’s ugly and flat! It’s a pollenbowl! We don’t get seasons!
Not until recently have I come to appreciate Dallas for more than being my drab hometown. (Its drabness makes visiting other cities all the more exciting.)
One of the unexpected benefits of being a photographer is having the opportunity to explore the world outside of my sleepy, suburban cocoon. When I couldn’t drive, I cherished the Sundays my dad would take me to Lower Greenville or Kessler so I could look for photoshoot locations. As soon as I got my driver’s license, I'd spend hours hopping from one neighborhood to the next, parking along (or on) the curb and jumping out of my car each time a stained-glass window or a set of tapered columns caught my eye. The little craftsman homes and 19th-century storefronts and gothic-revival churches, all the buildings that had stayed firmly attached to the ground for generations and generations were, ironically, refreshing to see.
Because next to every bungalow there was a McModern triple its size. Next to every 19th-century storefront, a concrete and glass vintage boutique or health-conscious restaurant.
And it was on one of those Sundays that Dallas' transience became painstakingly clear.
It seems the city has always been characterized by the desire to transform itself: the unspoiled prairie turned into neat rows of cotton; the tiny frontier town turned into a premier trade center for agriculture, then oil, then technology. And this desire has been the driving force behind more than its ever-evolving physical form. It was the prairie’s promise of possibility that brought the first settlers to the Trinity River, a promise the people of Dallas hold onto still, as they continuously seek to remake themselves amid the free range of the American frontier.
But in its pursuit, Dallas has muddled its history with myth — century-old landmarks are demolished in the dead of night in favor of high-rises and shiny commercial districts, the debris nowhere to be found but in the dust coating the memories of those who once drove by them, worked near them, lived in them.
No wonder why it is so refreshing to stumble upon a building over 30 years old.
I recently decided to delve a little deeper into our city’s history, and was surprised at just how little I knew. Victory Park was once Little Mexico, and Little Mexico was once a Polish Jewish community. Nestled in between Commerce Street and Stemmons Freeway is a half-acre park where three slaves were hanged for allegedly starting the 1860 fire that destroyed downtown.
I sometimes wonder what type of city Dallas would be had our history not been left out of textbooks and buried under I-30.
Alas, if that were the case, would Dallas really be Dallas?