Galileo
2010; Colorado State University; Volume: 37; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/col.2010.0012
ISSN2325-730X
Autores Resumo96 Between December 2006 and January 2007, we recorded thirty conversations throughout New York City. Each talk lasted forty-five minutes. Half of them took place at a Union Square health-food store that we call “W.F.” Other locations included MoMA, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Opera House, Central Park, Prospect Park, and a Tribeca parking garage. What follows are the final minutes of the sixteenth talk. 6:20 p.m. Sunday, January 14 Union Square w.f. A: Um, as you speak a gorgeous huge moon has risen beyond the bank. J: Oh. A: A full one. J: That bank has the banner which says Almost Maine, and a full moon, or nearly . . . A: I think it may be full. Full moons grow so large they no longer seem round. This looks chunky to me. J: And beneath that moon we could almost touch Maine ourselves . A: Sure. But I find this moon in no way diminished by reflections from spherical lamps hanging—the w.f. ceiling, which projects out over um 14th Street traffic. J: Though without lamps the city would lie bathed in silver. Maybe Whitman’s New York had moonlight reach it. JON COTNER & ANDY FITCH GALILEO (FROM “CONVERSATIONS OVER STOLEN FOOD”) 97 A: He mentions that in D.C., and there’s a a book of World War Two reportage, with American correspondents (during airraids for instance) describing London flooded by moonlight for the first time this century. J: Oh. A: Able . . . correspondents discuss hearing crushed canned peaches drip since streets stay so quiet. As for what you’ve called . . . J: [Muffled] faster than I’ve seen before. It’s now well above that building whose corner had been piercing it (or rather cutting into it). You’d said Kristin’s coming later tonight? A: We’ll eat here then . . . J: Do what afterwards? A: read at the café on Irving. J: Oh yeah? Maybe I’ll plant myself at a neighboring table. A: You could spy on us, like the day I visited Boston and spent my free hours reading in the public library, but then got passed a note announcing I’d been observed while absorbed in thought. I’ve since . . . J: Did we meet later that evening? I can’t remember. A: Well just yesterday I noticed how packed my life is. I’d prepared to see a film with Kristin, then meet you, then call our friend Liliana and attend the party—all after six full . . . J: Yeah, I suffered this fall in Providence, where I felt little motivation to get work done quickly. In the absence of that overabundance we can spend whole weeks on what ought to take hours . . . A: Which . . . 98 J: amounts to a loss of time, and loss of life. If as James Schuyler says, “A few days are all we have,” then we’d lose our greatest possession. A: Though Schuyler disliked New York busyness himself. The moon just cleared a a rooftop railing. The aesthetic pleasure watching couples wolf down sushi—it takes a long day’s work to appreciate this: the way a woman swings her legs obliquely as if scrubbing streets while she crossed. You missed her. She wore a rainbow hat. Or that deliverer with his strapped pizza-box bouncing. Elsewhere such sights get lost to perception. J: Because . . . A: Because I’d be dreaming I’m dating a movie star. J: So a gold band now rings the moon. Do you know what produces this phenomenon? A: Can you see it from certain angles only? Don’t people call it the numen, or lumen? It’s more intense if you wear contacts, since as you stare contacts dry out. Everything acquires a haze or sheen. J: Have you read Galileo’s account of the moon’s rough surface? A: This sounds familiar. J: He delights in slaying a mythical beauty previous eras assigned to the moon. He thinks he’s heralding the triumph of science, so that science can put an end to myth. A: Right, he couldn’t watch this moon between skyscrapers . . . J: Yeah . . . A: when it’s obviously beautiful. Or see moon, say, just beyond...
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