surrender the day
I went out in my pajamas at three a.m. to find the moon. It sounds easy enough but I have no intuition for it - often as not the moon finds me first, bolting from behind a building or filling my window and surprising me entirely. I usually know how big it will be but I never know where to look in the sky.
So I set my alarm for three and went out in my pajamas, knowing nothing more than that the full lunar eclipse started at two fifty-four here in
On the dark corner in front of my house I became newly aware of the many old trees on my street, and the small patches of sky overhead all looked empty. It was quiet. I walked toward the park and there were lots of cats, because cats know this sort of thing, and then I heard people howling. I couldn’t find the moon. I felt uneasy.
I got in the car that Operaman left behind at my house this week, and I drove over the bridge. I craned my neck and peered out the dirty windows, desperate for the fiery orange circle I had seen in the paper. Nothing around me but sky and Orion, clear enough, but no moon. It must be low to the horizon, I decided. Somewhere behind all the buildings, or behind the mountains.
On my way home I stopped at the park, one last shot, and there were people on the picnic tables, and they must be looking at something. And there it was, high overhead looking nothing like I’d imagined: a phantom of a moon, a fingerprint. Hardly there at all. Grey red orange and grainy and nearly an illusion, with a border of lighter color on one side. The suggestion of a moon.
I looked at it for a while from under the streetlamp. I watched people in the park come and go – dog walkers and couples and a woman who said, as she climbed in her car with her friend, You can only watch an eclipse for so long. I wish I knew someone with a telescope, someone who would wake up at three in the morning and know where to point it. The universe throws little parties for us all the time. I try to at least stop in.
On the way home I knew where to look the whole time, even though I usually get turned around every time I turn around. The streets were full of cop cars. I parked and watched some more. I can see it from my corner. It was there all along, just not looking like I expected. I’m no good at finding the moon.
posted by tortaluga @ 4:33 AM
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(And there it is now, coming out from the shadow of the Earth that I’m standing on, a brilliant white uneven crescent creeping across the murkiness. It looks like a beam of light dipped in chocolate.)
Goodnight.
I walked outside last night, all by my lonesome in the middle of the night, scanning the sky for the moon. when I found it, it was a distorted mirror image from its usual self. the chunck that was missing was on the wrong side. I didn't think of this until later, but I knew it looked funny.
I thought it looked like a cookie with a bite out of it. I imagined it was chocolate chip.
which meant I also really wanted a telescope to verify that the little spots on the moon were not craters, but chocolate chips.
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