Full Cold Moon/Total Eclipse/Winter Solstice

photo by Rhonda Prince

Life is full of ironies.  I try to enjoy them when I can.  But I feel a little loss at this one.  Last night, as everyone knows, was the full moon lunar eclipse.  It was the Full Cold Moon.  And if the eclipse were not enough, it ushered in the first day of winter.  An auspicious day, I think, for anyone with a shred of romance in their bones.  And normally I would have been up to see it all and to drink and ponder, to wonder and wish on the moon's orange glow.  But I was inauspicious.  I've taken ill with a sore throat and runny nose.  So before eleven, I had drunk some sake, taken some cold medicine, and wandered off to my bed, not to rise again before seven.  This never happens.  On any other night, I would have risen to go out to see the spectacle.  I have an email from a friend at 4:11 a.m. asking me if I, too, was out looking at the moon.  I feel the difference.  I am odd and disappointed.

And I would guess that most of the people who come to this site were out last night, too.  I am a hundred percent sure that this is exactly the sort of person you are.  You are people who desire adventure whether in far off places or down the street, people who can turn a casual day into a memorable event.  And I feel left out.  Perhaps, you know, I would have seen that girl from the party wandering in and out of the old oaks past my house looking at the sky.  Surely anyone I would have seen last night this an upward gaze would have been someone I would like to meet.  The more I think about this now, the more I moan and gnash my teeth.  People will speak of it as a touchstone event.  "Do you remember the first night of winter when we watched the earth's shadow pitch across the moon?  Do you remember where we were?"  Of course they will.

I am being punished for something surely, or more likely have decided to punish myself.  Like one of Wallace Stevens' middle road, middle mind, middle class dwellers, like e.e. cummings "un" people, like "someones" and "everyones," I slept.  Sitting here before the keyboard now, I stop to recite the lines of "The Disillusionment of Ten O'clock":

Was I one with those lacking imagination last night?  Did I fail some critical test?  With what lot was I slumbering?  I know where I caught my disease.  It was in the mall on Sunday--remember?  I told you.  All those awful people walking about not knowing what they wanted, jerking and hopping with too much animation, excited by the commercial renderings of a holiday, or maybe just excited to be anywhere but home.  And in their sameness they coughed and sneezed and made me one with them, a contagious part of the tribe.

I am bitter.  It is my own fault.  I knew beforehand.

But I was ill and the sleeping has done me good.  Perhaps I slept with faeries watching over me last night, sprinkling a sleeping dust and giving me dreams.  That is what I will try to tell myself as I lumber through the first winter's day.  It is clear and cold, and I am unwell.  I'll need something powerful to cure me.

Here is a photo sent to me by Rhonda Prince the other day taken, she said, in the morning as she wrote at her desk.  I am flattered and happy.  I will use this as a talisman in hopes of recovery.  I will try to recover something.

And, of course, I will let you know.