Playboy, December 1998, Volume 45, no. 12, Braille ed., part 1 of 4, Tuscaloosa Public Library, Tuscaloosa, Alabama

Playboy, braille edition, given to me by an anonymous librarian as an item to be sold at a charity auction for Black Warrior Review, the literary journal I then edited at the University of Alabama. She gave me three copies. We auctioned two. I kept one.

A book, but a different sort of book than we are used to navigating: braille books (or in this case magazines) feel as light as air and near as lovely. Reading Braille is like looking at a sparser field of stars. I do so the night of the blood moon, April 15, 2014, as the shadow of the earth moves across the moon. Not as dramatic as the solar sort, still it's not hard to hold amazement close. Shut off the artificial lights and blot out the thing with your hand and watch the whole field of them deepen. I wish I could read it—Braille, the world, the sky. In a way I can and am. I'm reading it. I'm watching it and chronicling it occurring.

Of course there are those predicting that this signifies the end of days. They suggest that we repent.