I bought a telescope online. Nothing fancy. A few hundred bucks. Good enough for the balcony.
The night I set it up, I pointed it at a bright star and adjusted the focus. Took a while to get it right. Just a blurry bright spot, with a bit of fuzz around the edge—maybe my eyes were tired, maybe the lens wasn't clean.
Sometimes when I get home late—after 10 PM—I stand on the balcony and look up for a while. There's a lot of light pollution in town. You can't see much. The moon is clear enough, though. The edges of the craters look like tiny bumps, like stitches. I stared at them for a long time, thinking—those craters were made billions of years ago. Such a long time ago. And you can still see them.
When I was younger, I thought about going into astronomy. Ended up making socks. Twenty years now. I wouldn't call it a regret—sampling is interesting too. Matching colors, adjusting stitches, getting the elastic blend right—every pair of socks is a different small thing. Astronomy looks far. Sampling looks close. Far and close—in the end, they're both about adjusting focus until you see clearly.
I never told anyone about this before. That night I was looking at the moon when my phone buzzed. Old Zhang had messaged: "Old Zheng, look at the moon tonight. It's huge." I looked up at the moon, then down at my phone, and replied: "I see it. I'm looking."