exploded silence and kantian astigmatism

standing in the train after an exploded silence
[21XI09]

the crowd cannot touch me
but i am close enough
to read its thoughts,
breathe its yawns,
and avoid its exhausted eyes
___

in which the moon and astigmatism prompt a detour into kantian philosophy
[02XI09]

we were looking at the moon, my brother and i, and amid comparisons of astigmatic eyesight, conversation drifted into the realm of kantian philosophy. “bees can see a different kind of light,” he said.

“ultraviolet,” i answered.

he ignored my display of apian scholarliness and pursued his own train of thought: “the moon we see, it will always be dependent on our senses — even if you take a photograph or a video of it, it will always be different from person to person.”

(or species to species, if we consider the bee he brought up)

“i can see a blue ring around the moon,” i said, while thinking about the bee. “can you?”

“no,” he answered as he blew cigarette smoke from the side of his mouth. “but it’s almost like there are two moons.”

“will we ever know the moon — the thing-in-itself — or is what we know of it limited by our senses? does the moon — the-thing-in-itself — even exist outside of our understanding?,” i asked.

he remained silent and we both looked at the night sky, thinking about bees and noumena.

i briefly turned my attention away from the moon — a white disk ringed by blue flame — and wished on a star that my brother be given the chance to discover kant as i had: in college, sitting on an armchair, my mind open and waiting to learn.

(passe, i know, but on nights where an imaginary bee casts a shadow by the light of a gibbous moon, all is forgiven)

//originally a tumblr post