The City is No Excuse
a game of connections, a poem, some apples, some lights.
Welcome again! Let’s a play a game of Connections. I already did half of it. Let’s see if you can solve the rest:
CYCLONE, GALAXY, SNAIL, and SUNFLOWER are “Spirals in Nature”.
CYGNUS, GEMINI, ORION, and PEGASUS are constellations.
I had a conversation about this, on WhatsApp:
A: I don’t know much about constellations
B: That’s unfortunate
You should look up tonight
Tis all there
A: unfortunately I’m not sleeping in a mountain hut
B: that’s no excuse
There’s apps for that
A: that’s a little sad
B: Then what would you call relinquishing the night sky to the wilderness
A: also a little sad
what’s the wilderness anyway
B: A place where you can see the night sky appless
App-less, apples — the forbidden apple, Greek mythology’s apple of strife, Snow White’s poison apple. I thought about how we understand the world through our eyes, but also through stories, also through technology, through conversations, and sometimes only through taking a high-stakes bite. Connections are a muddle like that.
The following invites the stars back into our house, and can be read as a critique of Enlightenment, in not so many words.
Light Pollution
The city is no excuse just point
your phone at the sky it can show you cygnus,
pegasus, cassiopeia — you don’t need
some prehistoric black
Wilderness: a place where you can see the night sky
app-less
Think: Steve’s apple, Eve’s apple.
Three days in the dark and you will know them
again: the stars, not the stories.
There’s something else at work,
your mind alone won’t
let you seeyour mind, alone: snake snickers
the fairest of them all
