blissbat > objects > star globe

object: star globe

Noctilucent, adj: Shining at night. Used especially of certain high clouds.

Fusion makes the stars shine. And a star is nothing but "a natural luminous body visible in the sky, especially at night."

There are a circle of small metal globes, lit from within, in Kendall Square. I pass them daily on my way from work to the train -- in the daylight, they're just grey metal with holes, but at night they're spirals and swirls of light. They surround a larger globe/steam sculpture that seems like it ought to give off warmth, but doesn't.

At school, there's a bridge at the far end of the lake where the water spills into the kill, and if you lie on your back crossways across the bridge, drop your head back over the edge, and look back across the lake, the reflection in the lake becomes a shiny sky. On cool nights in the spring and fall, when the lake is liquid and the water level's high, you can hang your head back and hear nothing but the rush of water and see nothing but the twinned stars in the lake and the sky.

These places aren't marked in the admissions literature. They get passed down like star maps and secret ingredients, pieces of a secret undercurrent of real experience.