Grade 6, an after hours excursion to Mr Burbidge’s house, most of the class turn up in the early autumn chill. It’s not cold enough to make cloudy breath, but enough for mittens. Soft furry mittens, while that cool air just nips at an exposed face. Mr Burbidge has a large telescope , almost as tall as some of us, in the light that leaks from the rear of the teachers house it is illumined in shiny stark white, fat and squat like a PVC plumbers pipe but with an eyepiece, almost like a mini telescope attached to the side. We ‘re here to look at the moon, but right now the telescope is trained on Saturn. We have to stand on a milk crate to get our eye up to the viewer but then there’s a massive excitement, bubbling a up like a steaming kettle on the boil , WOW! There, maybe the size of your fingernail is Saturn and its rings! Just like you see on television or in picture books, except this is real life , this is now , WOW! So exiting I almost fall off the crate. So what are the craters of the moon going to look like? Those gorgonzola cheese craters, are there giant mice?
In my teen years I’ll take to evenings alone on the roof of the garage, lying on a parapet wall with binoculars, bathing in the moon light as some would bathe in the sun. Me and my cold arse on those ridged bricks, that dividing wall between us and the neighbours. I like the quiet of the moon the silence of the stars, in the chaos of our life. Stillness, center, I am one with the all and through the binoculared world I see it all, feel it all and know that I am but a speck, a granule in this sandy universe, and through the lens, I see pictures of home, where I belong. This world is not where I am meant to be.
I snap out of reverie out of hypnotic moondance in my mind and continue thinking of homework and kittens being born by wild cats out in the shrubs. I shrink back, l and look at life as if through a telescope in reverse, where everything looks tiny, where people look like ants and I am a god. For a moment , I am a giant.
