March 13, 2007

• Jam

  The night sky is black, but not because it's black. It's not black because there's anything opaque here, it's not black because there are black clouds. It's not black because of smoke or belched chemicals from refineries. It's black because when those lights are turned on, up and down the shore like bonfires, like Christmas lights, like birthday candles in rows and grids and matrices... It's black because when those lights are on, we can't see the stars.

  The looming orange of streetlights fill the vision, because that's what's really there. The orange and the red tail lights. The thrum of a billion different specifics all moving in general in this view from on high. A momentary blip in geological time, come and gone before anyone notices. An eternity to the guy stuck in traffic.

  It's the wiring, you see. The circuit board wiring of the machine that is the city. The guy stuck in traffic sends his little message back and forth along the road, along his job, his home, his family, his progeny, his life, his soul, his connection to everything. But right now, stuck in traffic, and right now just a gone-beyond-gone blip in the Mind Of Geological Consciousness. Such as it is.

  If you take your hands and cover the city, from your perch overlooking it, you can see the sky. Things start taking shape, though the bounce-back light will still obscure it. You let your eyes adjust and you can see some stars. The moon was already kind of obvious, but now you're seeing it whole.

  The moon, you see, is in it's own traffic jam. Well, maybe not. Maybe there's no other moon to flip off in a fit of road rage. It comes and goes, though, stuck in the same pattern, beaming down cheese-infused light to ignite the passions of lovers and werewolves.

  Pull back your hands. The light of the city overwhelms a little, but you adjust. That's what you do. You're a human being. You adjust. You travel between these worlds and adjust wherever you go. You see both, and you see all.

  • 1:24 am
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