Eclipse

“All is well, provided the light returns and the eclipse does not become endless night. Dawn and resurrection are synonymous. The reappearance of the light is the same as the survival of the soul.”-- Victor Hugo

Note: The recent blue moon, death of astronaut Neil Armstrong and the recent full moon of August led me to finish a journal entry from a few years back

 

August 28, 2007 

The alarm went off at 5:00 AM and I went out on the front porch to see if the scheduled lunar eclipse had started. The moon was about 30 degrees above the western horizon and the shadow of the Earth had begun it’s creep down along the top of it. A few clouds paraded by, briefly blocking the view, but in all actuality enhancing the scene, animating it with a misty overtone. More beautiful it seemed than if the sky had been empty of clouds.

The night was breaking away and the blue moonlight and the approaching dawn were competing at illuminating the silhouettes of trees and lawn and house. It was strangely incandescent as well. The glow from the objects that surrounded me seemed to be emanating the light, not reflecting it.

A cacophony of animal and insect sound--tree frogs, locust and other creatures rustling in the dark—mixed with the rustle of leaves moved by the gentle breeze. More of a quiver of movement to the musical creature noises orchestrating the scene. The air that touched me, that slight breeze, held an Autumn feel to it on this August evening. Refreshing compared to the often still, hot summer evenings of late.

How strange the world seemed to me, almost as if I was looking out on another planet. I felt a bit like an intruder to the pre-dawn twilight that was so foreign to my awake patterns. I was a specter to the sunrise.

Above me to the east, the stars were bright and clear yet billions of miles away yet seeming to be close to the Earth, dancing in and out of the clouds, forming and reforming their patterns in the void.

The wife joined me at my side as we sat on the porch steps to watch the moon slowly lose itself in the Earth’s passing shadow, darkening to a shadow of its former self. I wondered to myself what primitives must have thought when they stood in witness to this draping of the moon above them. It would be as nothing they were ever familiar with. Would it fill them with dread? With Awe? With joy perhaps? Would they see it as a sign or omen?

Then the eclipse was total, then it was moving away to normal again. Reversing. I became aware of the night changing over to day at the same time. The geese in the pond across the field began to cackle and rise into the night early dawn sky. The neighbors truck started and went down the road to his early morning commute to Ann Arbor to hang steel at the University of Michigan Stadium renovation. The early dawn gave back the moon after a few moments and it started its race to the western horizon, to appear again tomorrow full in the night.

This morning is permanent ink on my soul. A tattoo of what I have seen. I wish I did not know what had caused the theft of the moon this night. I wish I was a primitive and thought the spirits were stealing my moon. I would like to think that a spirit or a god or my dead ancestors had made it happen. I want that mystery.