I was walking along, looking at the sky, thinking about a line from "Bad Penny" about the sky (more on this in a minute), thinking about Richard Wright from Pink Floyd and how talented all those guys were (we watched, again, the "Classic Albums" on the making of "The Dark Side of the Moon" last night; the piano in "The Great Gig in the Sky" is getting written about all over the web today, and for good reason), thinking about my terrible sleep pattern over the past few days, and how I've been laying awake for most of the night, only to finally fall asleep sometime after 2 a.m., and then wake up before the alarm goes off, usually around 4:45 (my alarm is set for 5 a.m.). It's dark at 4:45, in case you didn't know. And then, this morning when I finally got on the road at 6:15, I was driving right at the setting full moon [the moon was full on Monday].
It was pretty spectacular. The size of it, mostly - it was so huge, and so white, and so round. It poked in and out of some wispy clouds, and was right in the middle of the clearance from the trees on the street I was on. I actually pulled out my camera and took a photo. I did the same thing yesterday. Neither photo is very good - the tiny moon looks like a pinpoint, not the giant white sphere I saw when I pulled over with the window down, my arm hanging out to take the photo.
On my walk, I thought about how I never really consider the sky unless I'm thinking about the things that are "on" it. Or in it? Clouds, stars, the big ol' beating heart of the sun, the moon, planes, birds, smog. I think about how those things look in contrast to all that blueness, or blackness, as the case may be. In fact, I wrote a poem (the only poem I ever wrote worth mentioning; maybe one day I'll stop trotting it out like it's my pride and joy [maybe it is]) about how to me, the sky looks flat, like a drawing in pencil, or crayola. I think the sky is like a hat we're all wearing, and what we see is the inside, the seams and lint and dust that stick to the insides of it. I guess that's not really true, though, because the image of a hat implies that the sky is protecting us from something, and as Hurricane Ike and other extreme weather proves, the sky doesn't protect us at all. Maybe the sky is just waiting to hit us with everything it's got. I don't know who or what makes the sky do what it does. Weather just is. I'm sure a meteorologist could provide a better explanation, but right now I don't need one. If you do, feel free to look it up on your own time.
The line from "Bad Penny," the part that I'm thinking about, is spoken by Kat (her hobby is myth), and it's something about how the sky is an optical illusion, a big fake. And I'm finding that right now what is happening is that I am thinking about a play I saw and worked probably 21 times, fairly recently, and only now are the words I heard all those times filtering their way past my skull and into my brain. Re-reading my script just now to see if my memory was right about the words Kat uses, I remember that I like the part where she says in such a long and confusing way that during the day we can't see the stars, but we know they're there; and then at night, when we can see them, all we're really seeing is an image of them because they're so far away that no one could actually see the stars themselves. It's not just distance, crazy Kat, it's time.
Kat (or Mac Wellman, the author) takes what I said about thinking about the sky and makes it much more interesting. I thought it was all just a flat surface on which to place things - the sky as designed by the guys who make South Park. Cutouts of construction paper: things may touch each other but they don't intersect, they don't do anything, they just sit there (the things on South Park do stuff, they don't just sit there). To her it's somebody playing a trick on her, that what we think we see is just a cover for an even more amazing place where all the mundane and meaningless things of the world go forever, even when we think they're "lost." She names things like coat hangers and socks but what if the things hiding out in the sky are more important than that? Dreams, and wishes, and meaningful looks. Or maybe what the sky is is just infinite nothing. If I were a better writer I'd know how to say what it is I'm feeling about all this. All I can say now, poorly I guess, is that it makes me feel very small, and a little tinny, like a music box person.
It's funny that this is what I'm thinking about now, during the day. At night, when I'm lying there awake, not sleeping, all I'm thinking about is the fact that I'm lying there, awake, not sleeping. I'm lying there, pissed off and frustrated, and that's all I care about, what I'm not getting at the time I'm supposed to be getting it. I wrote that sentence, and I wonder how true that is at other times. Me not getting what I want at the time I think I deserve it, I mean. I'm not sure that if that makes me a nice person or a bitch; I do know it makes for less sleep than I need. The bitch in me would say, less sleep than I deserve.
I seem to be making it through the day okay on minimal sleep, but then again most of my co-workers are out of the office and I haven't done much interaction with other people today. Maybe tonight, if the same thing happens, instead of lying there angry and confused and tangled up in a big burrito wrapping of blankets, I'll get up and go sit on the porch and look at the sky, the moon, and the stars. Or even just an image of the stars, I don't really care which it is.
These photos would probably be more effective had I taken them at the same time of morning, from the same point in the street, and if the actual moon were in focus, and maybe more obvious (especially on the left. Can you even see it?). Oh, well. Interesting exercise, this, and maybe I'll do it again with more forethought.
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