“On a cold night, we can see forever…”
Written on October 12, 2019
“On a cold night, we can see forever…” (quote taken from Rae Armantrouts’ “The Thinning” 2012)
We were sitting in Barnsdall Park, on the east side of the hill, gazing up at the full moon. There were no trees blocking our view, so the moon appeared overgrown. Like that view from the fort, down the street from the Taj Mahal, where the unique combination of the window’s framing the temple, coupled with the fort’s precarious elevation, invites the Taj to appear too lush and too grand, even for a Wonder of the World.
Winter (I say in quotations) had just blown in earlier that week. We had rummaged through our boxes of last year’s winter items, re-discovering forgotten sweaters and coats, and extra mittens for which we had hoped to find the missing halves. Mittens that would never be worn in LA of course; we had lost some skiing at Alta and others while snowshoeing up at Big Bear last Christmas. With a glance, we both agreed to toss them back into the bin to be remembered and re-forgotten the next winter.
The naked moon sat perfectly content in the sky. It was equal parts hovering and grounded. Like the picture my nephew had made me— the white opaque circle glue-sticked onto a dark-blue construction paper, flaunting crayoned yellow stars that didn’t seem to quite twinkle because he hadn’t learned yet that yellow on blue paper equals brown. But tonight’s moon was whole and seemed to hold both of us.
We sat silently draped in our thickly-stitched blanket we’d bought on our honeymoon in Peru. He had laughed when he had spotted it at the market. “Look, llamas on a llama-wool blanket— we gotta get it!” It was one of the many seemingly everyday memories we had built together. I loved to sit with them on my ride to work. I’d stare out the window and let whatever memory that wanted to pop up, float into my consciousness. I’d let the happy ones wash over me and fly me around. Sometimes I’d be holding the strand of one memory when another would arise. I loved to untangle them in my imagination, recalling all the love we shared.
But tonight, there was no desire to float into, up or away. I was enjoying our silence, the warmth of his cheek next to mine, the grandeur of the moon, and the smiles I knew we were both wearing on our hearts, underneath our winter sweaters and our double llama blanket.