Journal Entry, 12/5/2025

Photograph by Robert So

Drove into the Moon on the way to work this morning. A full or nearly full moon, pale, looking not entirely solid though not ghostly. First caught sight of it near the bottom of Newark St in Jersey City. It loomed huge above an overpass (background for a streetlamp planted in the overpass). On my left was an elevated track for freight trains, a sheer wall rising up beside the sidewalk. I could’ve had a postcard shot if I'd had time to stop & a camera & the right place from which to shoot.

I thought I wouldn’t see much of this moon, but I saw it just about the whole way to school, losing it only at the end as I exited 280. It didn’t shapeshift—it was always round—but it size-shifted as I drove and went from directly in front to me to off to the right then centered itself again. I missed 2 dozen postcard shots—over the riveted girder-work of bridges on 1-9, the Passaic River, over Newark, directly over the Newark Cathedral, hovering just above the dark scratch-work of winter-bare trees against pale-blue sky. I shut off my audio book (Vineland) most of the way, enjoyed the Earth magic, & silently gave thanks that we have this orbiting world, dead though it is, & couldn’t imagine the resultant diminishment without it.