Racing in Place: Collages, Fragments, Postcards, Ruins

Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Moon Winx

Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Moon Winx An Essay on the X It is the Moon Winx Lodge. That x does a lot of work. There is the x that visually represents a cartoon wink. The eyes are x’ed out in death or drunkenness, the unconscious x that mimics the XXX labeling the jug of moonshine. At night when the kinetic neon of the sign blinks and winks, what flutters on and off is an X of braided tubes. The man in the moon x’s out for a moment, then snaps awake again. And why that knowing wink? The X of the unknown or, more precisely, the X of the not wanting to know, the hidden, the disguised, the censored. x’ed out. It is the X of sex, of course, the ultimate rating. The excesses of sex. Or the string of drunken kisses. XXX. The cheesy lodge is a testimonial for itself: The Notell Motel. X marks this spot. It now is X-rated. Winx is a kind of poem. It multiplies its meanings. X times X. It’s the cross-hatching of a switch, a toggle. It is the map of the crossroads. One does both in bed. Sleep. Sex. Sleep. Sex. This double cross. These eyes closing in sleep and closing in pleasure. These I’s leaning in toward each other, crossed and crossing. X-tasy. X-scape. X-tra marital. “Get it?” the sign says, “Get it?” The sign winxs, and you do, you do get it. 144 An Essay on Astronomy One can watch the moon rise above this moon. And people do, parked in the empty Moon Winx Lodge parking lot, arrayed in a drive-in movie semicircle of cars, the pattern shadowing the crescent of the crescent moon floating a few feet above them. People come to just watch this moonlight of the moon sign. This moon lights up at dusk, begins to wink, the stuttering spark, the rippled strobing of the inert gases in the tubes. The road runs east and west here, a transcribed latitude the Moon Winx moon intersects and the real moon traces in its courses. If one’s lucky the other moon rises above the pines in the distance and then the buildings next door. The moon rises over the shoulder of, balances on the edge of, the blinking simulacrum of the moon. The sign becomes a kind of instrument—a sextant, an astrolabe, or the simple arc of a protractor and plumb line. One closes one eye and takes aim at the phenomena of this asphalted heaven. One shoots the moon as it moves through the night above Tuscaloosa. The moon is in transit across the moon. The sign’s single eye eyes the moon’s track, tracking the moon. Its cratered eye peeled and rolling up into its blinking lid. The moons are eye to eye. And the two o’s of the “Moon” seem to ogle the rising moon. The real moon turns white like some kind of fluorescent bulb itself. “Oh!” the o says and “Oh!” again the other o echoes. This is glacial fireworks. One “oohs” and “ahs” as the moon inserts itself above the moon. Oh, strange cell division! Then, one can do it all again. Orbit the sign and set up station on its far side. There, watch the moon set below the arching outline of the moon, watch the lozenge of the moon slip behind the moon, swallowed then by the open mouth of the moon, a moon within the moon. An Essay on the Neighborhood of Neon The Moon Winx Lodge is in a neighborhood of neon on the east side of Tuscaloosa. The “Flora Signs” sign, exfoliating ever expanding petals of neon filigree, tops the hill above the Moon Looking at the Moon Winx 145 146 Looking at the Moon Winx Winx. I imagine that company has something to do with this precinct of light twinkling along the street. The Bel Aire Motel’s sign, a sapphire waterfall, is within sight of the Moon Winx. A block or two farther west, leading farther into Tuscaloosa, is Leland Center, whose asymmetrical cacophony of neonencrusted signage disappeared in a recent beautification effort of the Alberta City suburb. The light sparked and flashed but the sign itself, the underlying skeleton, cantilevered and jointed, was framed with contrasting shapes, organic and industrial. Nearby a Mason’s...