At the Space Theater the stars are made more wondrous and prosaic:
the Milky Way is rewound, fast-forwarded, collided with nearby galaxies,
as though nearby made any sense in this unreal landscape, both alien
and, in moments of reverie, acutely familiar. For is not our inner life this
vast? And can we not, in dreams, make such light work of the heavens?
Who has not come within a stone’s throw of it all and found himself
more distant, more alone than ever? As the lights go up, you cross
the threshold from one illusion to another; outside, the smoke of grilled
halal lamb, the stench of piss and vehicle exhaust drifts right through you—
for there is no more you. You reach out the hand that is not your hand,
you look through eyes that are not your eyes, you walk on legs stolen
from a statue in Central Park: the skyline is empty but for a dance
of dust and gas in the shape of skyscrapers, which at some point
must have been great achievements that made some men rich and
others very proud. Yet slowly, as when drinking coffee at four
in the morning, the gravity of this world returns. Memories. Things to do
and a person that has to do them. Great anxiety, and a futile desire
for certainty. But also love: the hand that is again yours touches another,
and that hourglass of light is now your wife’s body, soft exactly
where you want it soft, firm where you’ve always needed it to be firm…