Happy Cold Solstice!
Auspicious tidings on this totally-non-arbitrary-day-of-recognizing-cyclic-and-or-orbital-motions-of-our-pertinent-planetary-bodies! And that we share ways of noticing our recognitions! As the totally-eclipsed moon was washed red with an atmospheric glow not unlike that of a just-ignited Yule log, I hope we all stayed as awake as necessary for what was surely one of the most special events on a Cold Solstice since 1638 (and until 2094).
I was recalling last night, as I laid on the beach and stared up at that much-more-spherical-seeming-when-it-isn't-doing-its-mirror-thing heavenly body, that I spent a fair amount of the last lunar eclipse also just sort of checking it out. I actually wrote a poem about the last one (with a title that went something like "On Viewing the Last Total Lunar Eclipse Until 2010" (which probably seemed further away at the time), that was mostly about apophasis, which was at the forefront of my thinking in those days (part of the broader & on-going negativism of my poetics/worldview)). That poem got whittled down and eventually just called "Apophasis," but then got whittled down to where it's just a couple chunks of moon-imagery that are waiting for other poems to show up in (one chunk did, not so long ago, tho I can't quite recall it at this moment).
In the usual kind of nerdy misappraisal of other peoples' behaviors, when I stepped outside last night to start watching the eclipse, at about 1:45am, I was expecting the streets, the park, the beach to be crowded with other people also out to stare at the moon (I seem to recall moon-viewing in a decent crowd at Franklin Elementary for some eclipse of yore, so maybe that established a false precedent for the popularity of lunar eclipses (especially on the solstice, come on!)). But it wasn't all that crowded. I've been living on the Beach for a couple days now, so it's odd to see people still out at their bars and clubs at 2am and not stopping whatever they're doing to go stare at the sky for a while.
I headed to the beach for viewing, wondering, as usual, about why I already knew I was going to end up blogging about this, and whether or not this compulsion to share is problematic or not, or even a compulsion, etc. And also, like, watching the moon slowly lose its light.
Mostly: when it's totally eclipsed, the moon is a rock in the sky.
And: when a totally eclipsed moon is blocked by a passing cloud, the rock in the sky is gone.
I was recalling last night, as I laid on the beach and stared up at that much-more-spherical-seeming-when-it-isn't-doing-its-mirror-thing heavenly body, that I spent a fair amount of the last lunar eclipse also just sort of checking it out. I actually wrote a poem about the last one (with a title that went something like "On Viewing the Last Total Lunar Eclipse Until 2010" (which probably seemed further away at the time), that was mostly about apophasis, which was at the forefront of my thinking in those days (part of the broader & on-going negativism of my poetics/worldview)). That poem got whittled down and eventually just called "Apophasis," but then got whittled down to where it's just a couple chunks of moon-imagery that are waiting for other poems to show up in (one chunk did, not so long ago, tho I can't quite recall it at this moment).
In the usual kind of nerdy misappraisal of other peoples' behaviors, when I stepped outside last night to start watching the eclipse, at about 1:45am, I was expecting the streets, the park, the beach to be crowded with other people also out to stare at the moon (I seem to recall moon-viewing in a decent crowd at Franklin Elementary for some eclipse of yore, so maybe that established a false precedent for the popularity of lunar eclipses (especially on the solstice, come on!)). But it wasn't all that crowded. I've been living on the Beach for a couple days now, so it's odd to see people still out at their bars and clubs at 2am and not stopping whatever they're doing to go stare at the sky for a while.
I headed to the beach for viewing, wondering, as usual, about why I already knew I was going to end up blogging about this, and whether or not this compulsion to share is problematic or not, or even a compulsion, etc. And also, like, watching the moon slowly lose its light.
Mostly: when it's totally eclipsed, the moon is a rock in the sky.
And: when a totally eclipsed moon is blocked by a passing cloud, the rock in the sky is gone.
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