No Light & Old Light

Night Driving and New Blogs

Old Light

Ladies ‘n gents, I’m an editor.

I’ve started a new blog. It’s called Old Light.

Focusing on visual astronomy, it’ll be hosting observing reports, musings, and guest articles. Think of it as a curated middle between the lively forums on Cloudy Nights and the major league polish of Sky and Telescope.

It’ll be nerd central. Sweet. Hop on over there and give it a look, a subscription (it’s free), and send along an article if you’d like to do a guest post. Here’s one about the moon blotting out Neptune the other night.

No Light

Roanoke is putting up wreaths. The old city buildings stood drenched in the November rain today, something timeless and American, their cold gray stone matching the cold gray day, somehow festive. It made me want to take a train across the country, and stop to visit the sister buildings who keep watch on Main Street USA.

Then it got dark, and I drove home.

The distance hung black around the windshield. I seemed tangled in an endless blanket, or lost in space, vision tunneling.

Fragments of color floated up: a sign, green. A sign, yellow. A car with lights, white. I stopped for gas, watching the occasional truck hurtle by, flashing through the lights and then–only a swish and an echo. Gone.

The night is so sparse, like my refrigerator. One ingredient. Another. Far apart, compartmentalized, in elemental form. But nothing connected. No food. No blending. I’m a terrible cook.

Night: when I can’t see anything, except for one Lego-green piece of a sign, and then another.

I wonder if it’s like this if you went to the sub-atomic, magic school bus-style.

So I’ll stitch ideas together as I drive along, rummaged from only what I can see now (not much), and remember from the day (somehow faded). The ideas will often be wrong. People get reduced to Lego pieces this way, too, blocky, low-resolution, boxed.

I like to see the landscape in the sun. The foolishness of my simple constructions are obvious in the nuance of daytime.

I called a friend earlier, and she’s upset about the world and her father’s passing. I’m upset about her father, too, but not about the world in the way she is. We both miss him (but she of course misses him more, which is saying something, because I miss him a lot.)

We talked about him as the rain fell in Roanoke, and then about the world. We see things differently, but since we both tried with kindness and tact, wanting people to thrive. It was daytime in every sense of the word. We didn’t build those blocky bad ideas of each other that lurk roadside on dark rainy nights and on social media. It seemed hopeful.

I got home, and spoke with a guitar fellow. I showed him some blues stuff. He returned the favor, telling me about something he learned in his high school theology class. (Forgive my inaccuracies in the retelling): how the root of the word Knowledge is to try to gain control over. Knowledge is power.

Faith and credo and giving oneself away, relinquishing, surrender (to God, or elsewhere) is in another group. It’s not the poison Knowing, that unquenchable thirst that strangles my mind and twists my heart with the need to bend reality to my will.

“Wow, man, I’ve been trying to figure that out for ages!”

I’m driving at night, but now I’m aiming towards the dawn.

–Josh