(xcvi)


Claritas.

A signal, perhaps, on a noisy channel. A statistical fluctuation, some deviation about equilibrium. — The luck of the airwaves. With no prior warning, you’ve dialed in Rangoon.

Late at night, on the radio.

Or like a stream, perhaps. You cannot see through to the bottom, the water’s turbulent. But then the ripples as it were cancel out. The rocks appear against the sand, a little landscape, in clarity.

The telescope and the atmosphere: there are those moments, the camera cannot capture them, when everything is quite unexpectedly still and clear, and these moments are only for the living eye. For the observer, these are like moments of insight.

At such a moment Schiaparelli first saw the canals of Mars.