I am no more able to see constellations than the future. This was a revelation to a younger me who, on a weekend’s stay on the lake (the last hurrah of elementary school), realized that pretending to see something was easier than explaining I couldn’t.
I want to believe there are pictures in the sky, reader.
But I can’t see them.
I’ve read the books and I understand what should be there. In a splinter of galaxy set to paper, I can sometimes connect the dots myself. But not in the sky. I can hardly pinpoint the pole star.
Here’s a crazy thought:
Maybe that’s why I’m lost, why the road has been so long and inconclusive. Maybe the path is obvious to everyone but me.
‘Lifted halfway from the horizon, ‘The Public-Use Observatory’ rises menacingly from the highway- the west coast’s own bleak sun. The facility is prematurely aged by its proximity to the ocean, rusting at the creases in its frame and home to various seabirds. There is a gate at the parking entrance, though admission is free. The man that raises the gate looks as much a part of the environment as the booth he resides in.
‘The Public-Use Observatory‘ is open all hours, otherwise unmanned, and is, accordingly, built in the style of a public restroom- fortified in every aspect. The inside of the building is largely made up of cement and cheap, brutalist flourishes. Its walls recount a secret conflict between graffiti artists and a scouring brush, these hieroglyphic scars occasionally interrupted by the charcoal scorches of amateur arsons. The facility remains unfazed by these surface blemishes, it being a monolith and we being ants that occasionally explore its fissures. This is a temple of aluminum mirrors and flushless toilets.
The telescope level of this millennial ziggurat employs pure structural intimidation in the place of normal safety barriers. Massive exposed gears, operated by cranks on the floor, shift the lens about its hemisphere and crush the short-sighted vermin that have nested in the works. These represent ‘The Public-Use Observatory’s’ only confirmed casualties in its many years of operation.
For all its bluntness, nothing like ‘The Public-Use Observatory’ exists elsewhere in the world. Its accuracy and sheer invincibility make it the subject of papers in circles both cosmological and architectural. It is a private property and the little necessary maintenance is arranged by an anonymous patron. The only acknowledgement or dedication to be found is inscribed on the ground near the entryway. It says: ‘THIS IS IT.’’
A confession, reader:
‘I’ve been writing the entries as far back as August.”
Not much difference.
Alice guides me now, Shitholes re-writing itself or falling apart in the bottom of my pack. Her pick in the speedometer takes me to ‘The Public-Use Observatory’ and I follow, feeling freer for putting myself in her command. She, in turn, has become a gracious navigator, no longer pointing generally but signaling turns and off-ramps and reminding me to stop when my eyes are blurring with the length of the road.
There is a moment’s hesitation in the hand of the boothman when we turn into ‘The Observatory’ and I wonder if he reads my constellation blindness and pities me for trying. Absurd, yes. I can see the stars as well as anyone. For all the man knows I could be in the game for any celestial body. The gates raises, eventually, and I park. I stretch my fingers and examine my palms.
On the right, Orion in blue pen.
On the left, the Big Dipper in red.
“Foolproof,” said a friendly woman in a café, “These two are the easiest to see.”
That was months ago and I’ve gone over the little dots each night to preserve them, to memorize them, and, on a superstitious level, to encourage them to seep into my skin. People have recognized the patterns since and that’s only served to bolster me. I, a vampire of self-regard, steal into the night with their encouragements.
‘The Public-Use Observatory’ is a cold, echoing place, largely windowless and seemingly devoid of life. The caged lights in the mezzanine make the various informational signs difficult to read, but I learn from them the necessary crank rotations for aiming at and focusing on the foolproof constellations. Armed with this knowledge (having literally penned the coordinates on my wrists), I climb the stairs to the telescope and fail for an hour to see anything but the familiar pin-prick chaos of our universe.
A dab of hand-sanitizer does away with the scribbles on my palms, making a purple mess of my fingers. I pull a sheet of paper from the ground to wipe my hands- a tattered sign that lost its grip on the door.
‘Out of Order,’ it says, ‘(the stars).’
-traveler
