This time, It's nighttime...

This Sunday's post will be dark because the sun has fallen and I don't have the energy to call it forth. As if I could. As if I could make myself goddess, take hold of the reins, and pull back the globe of the sun. As if could wipe down the lather of its coat to make clouds, let the heat of its racing heart melt this snow.

I would sit, but the wooden bench here is again covered in snow - it's been powdered, crystal-covered, sparkling, lamentably dirty and gray. I could brush it off with my gloved hands, but there's something about making contact with a cold surface that feels self-defeating - so I'll stand against the railing. I like it there better anyway. It's as close to the city as I can get. I suppose I could cross the metal barricade, but it would be a quick view before I slid (probably to my death) down a nearly sheer face of mountain - covered in summer with tall grasses and tiger lilies, now it is burdened with snow. Compressed grass I can't see, and lots and lots of snow.

I approach the railing as if the city is an orchestra and I am the maestro - slowly. I inhale this cold, odorless night. I inhale deeply. I am ready for the show. I know it's a grandiose metaphor but here's the thing - this city at night - it's a grandiose sight. 

In front of me is a magnificent display of lights - lights like symphonic sounds, resounding in the darkness like vibrato, like a crescendo across the darkness - calling out to me in squares of yellow and white. Again, I am in awe - of this quiet city at night. 

Most of the lights are the color of incandescence, though some are red, orange, blue - some flash and race. All along the river, bridges are decorated with giant balls of light like classic wedding tents. And the river is a dark mirror, a veritable crown studded with watery gemstones. Everything - regardless of the cold, or in spite of it - percolates light.

Everything but the sky.

Tonight the sky is black, smeared with violet clouds, and I suddenly can't seem to remember if I have ever seen the stars here before. Maybe there is too much pollution of light. I know I’ve seen the moon - sometimes auburn, sometimes the same color as the building lights - white, yellow, pale. I’ve seen it slivered and fat, and almost full – I’ve even seen it larger than life, as if I’m not in Pittsburgh, but on the African savannah where the equator has the power to magnify what is celestial. But no stars tonight. So I look to the city for a glittery night. Because here I could make a million constellations, draw the gods of myth from man-made stars.

My breath comes out in a small cloud when I pull my scarf away from my face. I imagine this lit city unlit. And then, when I can picture the buildings as a collection of simple black squares, I erase their edges and begin to fill in the dark with scribblings of tree boughs, trunks, a few dead leaves. I try to think about what it would have been like to stand on this mountaintop in the middle of February when there was nothing of man below but the smoke of small chimney fires, tent fires. Smoke as insignificant as the breath that forms at the edges of my lips now. I know that the city of Pittsburgh was only drawn up in the early 1780’s; the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette up and running a few years later. But even then, even when the first idea of this city was forming, it had to have been darkness splayed out. And the sky must have stood in for city lights that weren’t even imaginable at that time – at least not in this magnitude.

I think of the word light pollution and what that means. Pollution means a contamination. I think these nightlights are like a horse-blinder, instead. Because nothing we can do - nothing we can possibly do - as miniscule, insignificant humans - will stop those stars from shining. They are a million light years away and a trillion times more powerful than we will ever be. No. All we can do is stop ourselves from seeing them. It’s not a pollution we’ve created, so much as a canopy. We’ve figured out how to hide this panoply. Or we’ve figured out how to make our own. Either way, I love this city at night.

Later, I googled: Mt. Washington, Pittsburgh, PA. I was curious to see what would come up about the view. I was fairly shocked (and happy - giddy even?) to see that an October 2009 edition of the USA Weekend voted this spot - Grandview Avenue, Mt. Washington - as the SECOND most beautiful place in America. The article stated, "The rivers cup downtown's lustrous Golden Triangle, where landmark skyscrapers thrust upward like rockets. At night, lights twinkle on no fewer than 15 bridges. Almost as breathtaking as the vista itself is the urban renewal that made it possible. A century ago, a pall of smoke lay so thick over town that streetlights burned all day." 

Link for complete USA Weekend Article: http://www.usaweekend.com/article/99999999/LIVING01/91015001