I HAVE BROUGHT YOU TO ANOTHER PLACE

240. I HAVE BROUGHT YOU TO ANOTHER PLACE (nyc, 1969):

One day I watched the moon big as a quarter or more rise yellow and slow in the sky - it was always funny to me how so much of NYC itself with all its big-city attributes and all that became for me nonetheless a huge observatory as I watched the sky everywhere I could for meanings and happenings of things going on - the downside to that was always the pure logic and rational science I'd find later to explain whatever I'd seen : how the moon it is said though appearing larger than ever at its rise and diminishing through the night as it rises and travels along the higher sky is always actually the same size at any time and merely to the observer seems so different at rise-horizon because of the dust and atmospheric infractions in the lower portions of the sky which acted always as magnifiers to the image - an idea I always found bogus and quaint because no one could then ever explain to me why the MOON going down is always small and never seemingly larger bright or as vibrant as the evening's rise but anyway no one ever watches a moon-set no one ever talks of it you never hear of it and certainly I thought that if you did it would burst the fantasy bubble of all these science types watching it descend small as a nickel in the waning sky (rooftops and certain other vistas were great for sky-observatory lookouts and some great expanses of parkland and grass across Central Park also held particular values as categorical spots for observing) and in addition any of the bridges and walkways high up afforded magnificent views and vistas as well perches from which to view - along the riversides and somewhere up along the upper westside where the Croton Aqueduct and its memorial water tower were located - Morningside Park and all that too - if one had the means and reason to roam and wander there were any number of points to go to : and in addition lots of my science questions and sky-observer thoughts went unanswered - things like do the stars generate their own light or is it all reflected like as the moon's from the sun and if it is are they not gaseous orbs aglow with themselves or are they instead dead matters and horrid floating chunks way out in the cosmos by the millions ? not to be outdone the diminishing returns of the effects of light and sky always tried to overcome the aspects of astral observatory I in my own way tried to make of the sky : a bus trip to the Catskills or Bear Mountain made often all the difference : that huge slab of rock and soil high above the Hudson's waters and looking out east from there the broad vista vivid in its way whether green with Summer of dun-brown and stark with the barren depths of Fall and Winter - large scrounts* of rock and dirt attached with trees and shrubbery in weirdly divergent manners high high up : the night sky in its turn was mysterious and wild in either place - witnessed by the strip lighting of comets and asteroids and a million stars twinkling but nowhere an answer to my own science questions : who generates what and from whence - the giant lights of the screen of illusion the broad scrim of picture-perfect imagination and the deep-black of night - ideas of Edison from here grew (why should he NOT - he surmised - take over a task of the God?) and the feelings concomitant with it - like the arms of a dentist down my throat and ripping at my rib-cage upward - I felt them all and considered them each - making me think hard about every idle minute I wrestled with fate and mused over meaning.

*scrount - outcropping, angular footing.