...days watching night sky...
...on the celestial strip show down in texas...
“What's the sense in having an eclipse if you can't look at it? Somebody in production sure slipped up this time!”
-Charles M. Schulz-
I spend my days watching night sky.
I want the wind to scoop and chew me into oatmeal ozempic so I can help the atmosphere lose a few pounds. I want to toss my hands into wings and fly upside down face first on cumulus floaties, my feet dangling in the welkin river. I want the earth in the air, the mud my new moon waning across the cactus fields, waxing across the chopped pebble trails on Old Randy’s ranch.
We used to see zoos in the clouds. A tiger with an eye patch snoring roar while our backs rolled on the picnic blanket flannel. There was nothing to do today. I used to make lists to keep track. Now the lists make me.
I folded the fuzzy blanket into a pug faced soggy wrinkled square onto the side of a couch that barely connected to itself and thought to myself “I am much better at unfolding things”. The blanket was the kind of gray that couldn’t hold onto itself, each sweep of my hand highlighting shadows between the crowded sweeping grain of its fabric.
We gathered a week past April Fool’s to watch cosmic solar burlesque. The sun, an embarrassed starlet in her first nude scene. The moon, a full sized feathered pasty on heaven’s tit. The clouds, a curtain stapled to today’s stage. They decided to choose the only day masses of people might stare at the sky together to cover the whole thing up.
The cast might be relieved to not perform. It is not like they regularly practice this revue.
It is a missed opportunity.
We build boxes to dance in and pin on the wall. What if we build theaters in the grass? There is no reason our communal passion for extraterrestrial baring should stand still at bi-annual box office.
Let’s cover the sky like Christo1 once a week and remind ourselves what we might miss if it wasn’t. A dissolving robe unties from the curvy cloud’s haunches. We can strap a million dollar bills to a rocket ship and make it rain on the Karman line2. A windy thunderstorm is prepared to encore today at approximately 2:34PM local time.
I set a timer for distraction. I need reminders to forget whatever it was I thought I was doing. It is a success to be fully confused in the moment. The day is a foosball table manned by four children, three balls at once, the foosmen twirling as they kick the wood circles with their painted nubby ends. There is a point in time where the point of a game is to play it, not to win it. I feel like a loser for forgetting when I forgot to do that.
I’d walk barefoot next to the bluebonnets were it not for the sleeping rattlesnakes waiting to bite me in their own confused moment. The lawnmower must look like a demon to the burrowing gopher at the foot of the starry flag. The moments all around me put my purpose in perspective.
I’m here just to see now. I’m here just to be now. I look straight ahead because it feels better on my neck. Children prefer singing to talking, the words make more sound than they make meaning. We can forget how to forget. I remember.
I fell asleep knowing that today would happen. All those moments I’ve stored in life’s freezer thawing to char over this evening’s grill. It is scary when you get old and you think you know something. I’m not so sure being sure is better than uncertainty. Products deliver new versions and updates every day. It is either planned obsolescence or a lesson in bad planning. The point of making something well is you never need to replace it, you just might need to fix it. The sky doesn’t need a fix, it is made perfectly.
I find it interesting that the more unique and singular things are, the more massively attractive they might be. No one declares national emergencies for staring at the sun unless the moon awkwardly cuts in front of its line. The lesson being the less we do something the more it might mean. Maybe it is time to become a man of few words. If I could only say one word a year what might I say? What would it mean?
Climbing cirrus, bouldering nimbostratus, seeking to reach the celestial peak and stare up at earth. The upside to being down is getting back up. Laid out on the stone I hear my spine breathe. My back likes to start the day on crack.
There is a story nobody told me about a place I can’t go. When I get there I can’t leave. When I leave I can’t get back. Today passes through my glasses until I make contact with my eyes. I’ve seen this all before but never like it is now.
A lady I love gave me a shirt that says “the best present is your presence”. I present myself with that present whenever I’m not pretending to be pretentious. Airing on this side of reality I come back into gravity. A machine might help me fly, but my mind gets better mileage.
There is an hour of darkness set to sit at the table with us. We give it bacon, eggs and two cups of beany black water. Butter toasted sourdough crusts dip into the chocolate toned abyss and kisses my lips. How beautiful to see you naked. I get a rise out of watching you set.
Midday becomes night, midnight becomes an alarm I set once a week to wake up and see what I’m missing. Every hour of the day holds a million minutes I might miss.
There goes one.
It is clear the sky might not be today. The empyrean ecdysiast teases us even behind the curtain. I stand in her path of totality seeking a path of my own. The romance of today’s reality is I only think I know what comes next.
The show today is all ages, but the kids might have to cover their eyes.
I lay down again and put on a pair of paper glasses, built like the kind you watch three dimensional movies with. My eyes and the sky are gray and blurred. Juniper titmice talk to each other from the branches of living and dead oaks. How polite of the storm to hold its applause until the end of the show.
“I was born during an eclipse. I believe very much in astrology. If you were born on an eclipse it indicates your destiny is chaotic.”
-Gloria Vanderbilt-
FOOTENOTES
https://christojeanneclaude.net/
https://www.space.com/karman-line-where-does-space-begin
A theater of photos and words worthy of an eclipse. And you’ve inspired me to start setting reminders to forget whatever it is I thought I was doing. 😉
Gorgeous photography!