OCR Text |
Show CHRYSALIS pAGE 200 stepping carefully around the dozens of silent bodies entwined on blankets, making love, seeming unaware of our presence as if we were invisible. There is the Big Dipper. Gemini and Antila on the horizon. Mark explains to the boys how they might find Polaris in the north sky if they are ever lost at sea, or alone in the woods. "Polaris is the brightest yellow star at the end of the handle of the Little Dipper. First find the two pointer stars in the Big Dipper," he says. "Can you find them?" "There they are!" says Chris, looking in another direction. "Polaris is right at the North Celestial Pole, so it is the most important navigational star." "That's where Santa Claus lives with all God's angels," Chris tells Matthew. "I wish I had a book on stars," says Remy. Cosmic immensities perplex me. I grope with the effort to define undefinables, to participate in the insistent solidity of rocks, in the unfamiliar air and invisible patterns of cells and fossils, in the enormous silences of stars. I "hear" it as a deaf person "hears" music by touching a radio and feeling the vibrations. |