I've heard it's quite quiet way out past the electric lines

Aug 02, 2006 03:17

I went to my old neighborhood tonight, because it was hot, and the apartment felt constricting, and I felt the fresh air and water might do the hangover good.

I wanted to go stargazing.

It was still hot out there, but it's dark, and I was able to walk the sprinkler slick streets and see the heavens unfold.

With no streetlights or stripmalls nearby, the stars were free to shine without fighting the awkward haze of a city's night skyline. It was not dark enough to see the entirety of Ursa Major, but it felt refreshing to see the Dipper in any event. I've noticed the sky above my apartment complex is usually this yellowish-grey bruise, and it was good to see black and blue speared through with silver.

I used to walk the shore of Lake Michigan by my parents house in Racine. I would watch the stars and satellites, and the staircase of the moon's reflection on the waves.

Looking back on my Kerouac adventures this spring, I realize a lot of it is memories of the night sky. One of my favorite things was when I detoured south of Dallas, to cut through southern New Mexico - I remember how the city polluted the night sky, and then once I left the freeway for the lesser used desert highways, it was like an ocean shelf falling away into an abyss. The skies faded to navy and countless stars, cold pinpricks of light, blossomed across the canvas.

In New Mexico, the sky became obsidian peppered with silver and white; the moon illuminating the car interior with it's stolen light.

The last gas station miles behind, and the tail lights of the only other car on the road finally slipping over the edge of the world no matter how hard I floor the pedal, and once the red lights wink out, there is no more evidence of the horizon. Black above, and black all around the Ford Explorer, with only a desert worn yellow line to mark the highway.

On some level, I long for the cold, clear winter nights in Oslo, with the stars and auroras dancing overhead, and the moon reflecting off of the ice and newfallen snow.
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