April 15, 2014 Lunar Eclipse: One person’s account

I get up in the middle of the night as I usually do at my age. A total eclipse of the moon had been predicted, so I detoured out onto our front porch. And sure enough, a thin arc of the full moon had been chewed away.

It begins, I thought. One a.m.

I crawled back into my bed. Still warm, soft. I might have predicted that I wouldn’t fall back asleep. Fifteen minutes later I got up to look again. I needn’t have bothered. Of course, more of the moon was gone. Although it was only apparently gone, if you believe what careful observers of these phenomena say. But not much point of me trying to sleep. Not much point in looking up at the moon, either.

I sat in a chair, making these notes. Rita, our cat, shook her head, looked at me for a second, yawned, and laid her head down.

About one-thirty.

I step out onto the porch. The moon is about at a quarter. I shake my head. I’ve seen this before. And yet I know that I haven’t. It is apparent, if only to me, now, that this is a moment in time. I was being carried along into this apparent moment, and then the next, and the next.

I went inside to check my computer. There’s a bright object a little higher above and over from  the moon and a little brighter orangish-red than the other stars. It is traveling ahead as these things are spoken of sometimes. A sky map on my screen says it is the planet Mars. Humans knew that long before computers had even been imagined.

At a quarter to two, a slice like a white slice of cantaloupe is all that is left of the moon.

Inside the sky map says that Saturn, with its rings that I have only seen in photos, but never visited, follows. But I don’t pick it out among the many stars in the washed out sky as I look toward the south east. They say that those stars burn like our sun. Some are galaxies like our Milky Way. And it is the sun’s firelight that is apparently reflected off the moon and then our spherical earth passes directly between and casts its shadow on the moon’s face. Or, they say, it is the moon that is passing through our shadow. Apparently, we see what we see.

This is all a commonplace.

So my front porch is a unique vantage point in all the universe. And I am playing with words because the universe speeds at its pace on a course I did not set.

Rita has turned over. I can see the tip of one ear from my chair. And she moves again, settling her chin deeper into her blanket-lined box.

I can hear a train whistle carrying across the night air.

Almost two. I step out again.

It’s cold, nearly freezing. I step inside to get some blankets and then return to the edge of the porch, sitting and then leaning against the limestone pillar, the blankets pulled roughly around me.

There’s a thin slice of white. My eyes are not perfect and the lines at that distance are not clear. And in a little more time, there is only a glowing lighter underbelly on what some call the blood moon.

Without my notebook, I lose track of the precise order of things. I see a star-like bright blue-white light approaching from up the street. Then, nearly silently, two apparent humans on two bicycles speed past on the sidewalk. I doubt that they spied my huddled form.

Then behind me, at this unmerciful hour, I hear a garbage truck pull into the parking lot at the school, then the banging of dumpsters and the beep, beep, beep of the backing truck.

The moon, dark and shimmery, was just about to pass by my rain gutter.

I moved down and out onto the sidewalk where the cyclists rode some minutes ago and I laid down in my blankets.

Eclipse is only a word.

I curled there for a time, not uncomfortable.

I watched the moon.

I howled. But not out loud. I’m too old for that. Or maybe I’m not yet old enough.

I thought about banging on my neighbors doors – to tell them to come out and look at the moon. I didn’t. I didn’t really mind being the only one awake on those two squares of concrete. I turned slightly to look up at the old Big Dipper, spilling out high overhead - the two end stars not quite pointing straight at the North Star as they tell you they should.

I step inside to check on the time by the clock – about 2:30. I walk quietly into the bedroom where there is almost no light at all. Leaning close, I can hear my wife breathing deeply. I did not wake her.

I returned to the porch. In time, the moon became a dark reddish color – only a bit of a whiter glow underneath. I had to crane my neck to see it past my roofline. I went inside once again to see if Dawn might want to see the moon. She mumbled when I sat down on the bed and then Rita came in and jumped up onto the bed. I asked her and then she said, with sleep in her voice, that she needed to think.

I paused and then returned to look up at the moon. Several minutes later, as I stood near the bottom of the porch steps, I looked over to see Dawn carrying Rita in her arms at the front door. I came up and pointed and Dawn looked at the moon. She kissed me and went back inside.

I followed her in and found my glasses that I almost never wear for distance, and then I went back out to the sidewalk as she went back to bed.

The moon was a clear circle, much smaller than a copper penny to the naked eye. Its textured  face, the darker red-browns to the pale glowing white now along the edge toward where the sun would come up in the morning. If it were not so far away, that moon would not be so much to see – and perhaps it is not even so. Still, I watched the moon move, imperceptibly – the motion only apparent over time, the moon’s disc at once not appearing where it had been moments in time ago against my gutter and the bare branches of the trees in mid-April. Or from where I sat.

Some people say that humans are a species that creates meaning out of our experience.

I am surely some kind of fool for forsaking my bed for a few hours of moon watching. But I am by no means the first to wonder what it all means.

A bright touch, then a slice of bright white appears. For a few more moments I watched, then I stood, a little stiffly, gathering the blankets up around my shoulders so I wouldn’t trip on them climbing the porch steps.

I’ll pass here on adding more meaning than what the notes of this account already reveal of what seemed to be important to me as I described the night. I won’t regret my lost sleep - there’s rest to come.

Oh yeah, at ten to four I can see a pale sliver of cantaloupe from where I stand outside on the sidewalk in the night. Time to go to bed. Looks pretty likely that the sun will come up in the morning – and that will be something to see for somebody.

Good night.

Bert Haverkate-Ens

following night moon