When Dream Died, I Think He Draped His Cloak over New Zealand

A farm sky is always very dark, as it is unsullied by the vast reaching fluorescence of large hyper-illuminated cities. A farm on the edge of the world has the advantage of being far removed from modern cities as well as largely surrounded by dark, solemn oceans which reflect but cast no real light of their own. This is where I currently find myself, truly appreciating for the first time, just how bright the moon is. Once your eyes adjust to the saturated darkness, you see that the moon (a quarter full on the night I am describing) not only reveals the forms and shapes of the landscape but also offers a sliver of depth for the ill-equipped and often unused rods in my eyes. I can distinctly make out individual trees and see fence posts up on the hillsides. Most things are visible but they are so extremely subdued that they adopt a whole new form. Greens become muted and grayed; they almost look sun-bleached. The road is no longer rocks and gravel but a slightly lighter path that curves into nothingness, the grasses with their sharp blades jutting up from the ground become hazy and blurred against the darkness of the sky. Noises become sharper and anything touching my skin is immediately exaggerated to ten times its actual size in my overwhelmed imagination. My mind races to fill-in the missing pieces and make sense of the entirely new landscape before me. Then I look up. The sky is black, an intense, velvety, endless black. A black of such alarming and profound depth that it is almost frightening. If you could touch the sky it would feel viscous and smooth and thick and soft. The stars are piercing and infinite and some of them dance and a few are pale pink, others clear blue and some are greenish or glow a bright orange. They shoot across the sky frequently and fade into the arrant night. They are decadent push pins holding up the sky (dare I say the sky is bedazzled?) The Milky Way is skim milk and seeps into the unfathomable heights of space. If you stare at one spot for long enough you can see the tiny satellites making their arduous journey across the sky. The plush night sky is immense and consuming, it’s inviting and cold, it’s utterly unbelievable.

That innocent Bible tells about the Creation. Of what- the universe? Yes, the universe. In six days! God did it. He did not call it the universe- that name is modern. His whole attention was upon this world. He constructed it in five days- and then? It took him only one day to make twenty million suns and eighty million planets! What were they for- according to his idea? To furnish light for this little toy-world.
-Satan relating to Michael and Gabriel his incredulity towards the Bible and of human being's unwavering devotion to it's writings in Letters from the Earth by Mark Twain.