When we talk about how heavy something is we are usually talking about the mass of it: how fast it would pull you under water if you were to hold it while jumping from the edge of an iceberg.
Looking at the moon last night I thought about how light (as in being) the moon looked because of how it was separated from its surroundings. A penumbras gives an object a thousand wings. That giant stone flying around as if it has just fallen in love; running around to tell all its friends peeking in the windows of stars. The sun aloft in its bedding, cast in the role of fire, looks determined not to be blown out with a set of birthday candles, but it’s hard to know if it will succeed.
I once was riding my bike with a friend of mine, Gabor, along a large tarmac. The ground was black and our shadows were parts of people folded up in the pages of books like leaves from a science fair project. Gabor laughed deep and sucked air into his noise, standing up on the pedals of his bike like the stern of a ship carved from a wood harder than teeth; something you can’t burn, something you can knock on in graves next to burning bushes for good luck; he was a warning to time to stop and for joy to become king of all that there was to see.
The tarmac at that moment was weightless, draped in the doily of our backlit bodies. All those spaces cut out of other spaces. The tarmac and our coasters-of-self offered up like small tassels in a topless bar.
I thought of the tarmac while biking through k-town two days ago; biking to a car that already had a parking ticket, the palm trees leaned over like otterpops melting in the sun and feet slapping on concrete. Bike petals clinking because of some stray ball bearing: the road a stick of gum placed salaciously on a woman’s extended tongue.
Bright green with just the right amount of spit.
That piece of gum could be the center of the earth pulling everything to it.