At the Hayden Planetarium Space Theater 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 insight,
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…