I am always amazed at how many folks can walk through Grand Central Station {NYC - thanks to Jackie Kennedy Onasis & the Vanderbilts} and never look up.... at the celestial heavens rolling under its massive vault. One of the small pleasures of being a Navy man, standing watch on the bridge - where you learned to observe - was an unencumbered view of the heavens from horizon to horizon and capturing how the mists and clouds bend light into glorious hues as if under a huge glass prism. The roiling clouds might stretch across a pancake flat expanse of Pacific growing quiet and still [aside from the ceaseless drone of boiler-room intakes] as the sun flickered its last, only to rise again to chase away the darkness of a star-studded night sky totally free of human toil & smog. {Certainly, up on the bridge was a step above all the lads standing watch below decks, tethered to their dials and gages deep in the ship's bowels, bereft of sky and alive only with the fragrance of fuel oil, hissing steam and the rhythmic songs of machinery}. Perhaps an angel's paint brush at times breathtaking and other times, of color, fury or a misty fog that made one thank God for radar. A hot summer night... with just a tickle of wind as something with winds of change comes ashore down in low country. On a humid late summer day, things might seem to walk slowly, yet there is something alive in the colors that beckons one to sit in a rocker and marvel at what a wonders of this world we have, if but for a brief time, been given to savor.
I am always amazed at how many folks can walk through Grand Central Station {NYC - thanks to Jackie Kennedy Onasis & the Vanderbilts} and never look up.... at the celestial heavens rolling under its massive vault. One of the small pleasures of being a Navy man, standing watch on the bridge - where you learned to observe - was an unencumbered view of the heavens from horizon to horizon and capturing how the mists and clouds bend light into glorious hues as if under a huge glass prism. The roiling clouds might stretch across a pancake flat expanse of Pacific growing quiet and still [aside from the ceaseless drone of boiler-room intakes] as the sun flickered its last, only to rise again to chase away the darkness of a star-studded night sky totally free of human toil & smog. {Certainly, up on the bridge was a step above all the lads standing watch below decks, tethered to their dials and gages deep in the ship's bowels, bereft of sky and alive only with the fragrance of fuel oil, hissing steam and the rhythmic songs of machinery}. Perhaps an angel's paint brush at times breathtaking and other times, of color, fury or a misty fog that made one thank God for radar. A hot summer night... with just a tickle of wind as something with winds of change comes ashore down in low country. On a humid late summer day, things might seem to walk slowly, yet there is something alive in the colors that beckons one to sit in a rocker and marvel at what a wonders of this world we have, if but for a brief time, been given to savor.