nightvision

we took my father and his wife out for dinner at a chain restaurant called the cheesecake factory. we've been watching our calories lately and knew that tonight's meal would be an assault on our bellies. it was for i am still feeling the effects of an early evening dinner that consisted of a piece of cheesecake, which i shared with nicholas, so massive that each delicious bite dropped like a brick to the bottom of my gullet and is still, some 6 hours after dinner, making its presence emphatically known.

i'm not sure what the decor of the cheesecake factory is meant to evoke. there are what appears to be ancient egyptian faces at the top of inscrutable columns painted in a doll-like fashion. there are nymphs painted on the ceiling as if they were frescoes and the whole of the interior is redolent of a child's doll house so that the walls are a light peach and the light is more than a hint of what might be a kind of disney-fied whimsy. it was the first time we ate at the restaurant. given the state of my tummy the dinner might last me the whole week. certainly the calorie count could last me the week.

at dinner we were told that because the space shuttle is docked with the international space station and because of its orbit that at 9;32 pm we could see it pass just above the crescent moon in the southern sky as it moved from west to east. it was a very hot summer day. it is still very hot and at 9:00 pm i went out to the garden to water the potted plants. when i finished i stepped onto our front porch and began scanning the sky. it was nearly 9:30. just then anna and nicholas were standing behind me and anna pointed at the sky and asked if that bright light moving very fast from the west and heading toward the moon was the shuttle and space station. it looked almost like a plane but it was silent and without the blinking lights of a plane. it was large and after a few moments we knew that it was indeed the shuttle docked with the space station. we witnessed it as it passed in its orbit, a beautiful sight.

the image of the shuttle and space station gives me hope that our fucked up species might overcome its shallow stupidities and enlarge itself of love and fellowship. such abilities to create and send a craft full of people into space is awe-inspiring and if that humans, flawed, frail, incomplete, each one must be born, endure, love, eat and shit, that each one must also suffer death, that our veritable human being can make such craft and succeed in its missions no matter how grand or modest, maybe then faulkner was right in his assessment that man will not only endure but prevail. who knows. i simply hope.