The Dark Times: Day Two: Eclipsing
11/8/22
6:42 am – 4:54 pm
Hours of Daylight: 10 hours, 13 minutes
Last night was a full eclipse of the moon.
I didn’t watch it.
Apparently it was in the same position as a full eclipse of the moon that took place almost 20 years ago, on November 9th, 2003. That one I did watch. And I remember it sooo clearly because I had just fallen head over heels in love.
A year before that moment I had dropped out of school to travel and what happened to me during that period of time was nothing short of a miracle. I AWAKENED. I woke up. My brain let go of the indoctrination I had experienced in school. I sought beauty and stories. I slept under the open sky and cried and learned to make fires, and talked to the trees. Everything shook loose. People handed me books in the streets that changed my life. It was the beginning of the me that exists today and I cannot BELIEVE it took place that long ago. I learned to see. I learned to pay attention. I learned to hunt and make medicine from the plants. I collected food. I came to know the water, and the way the wind whispered past my neck, and the language the birds use when they say their little goodnights before they go to bed. I found a world soft and beautiful. I fell in love with the stars, the sunrise, the night.
And the moon.
I felt like I hadn’t met her before. I had no idea she meandered lazy patterns across the sky. That if you peeped your eyes open every so often as you awoke to stoke the fire she’d have traced a journey clear across the heavens. I hadn’t known she could cast shadows, that cactus and trees reached towards her light same as in the day. And that sometimes she and the Sun appeared in the sky at the same time, holding each other steady, for all of us below.
Except…I had known. As a small child, finding all the little pathways and crawl spaces throught the shrubs in our backyard. Picking the golden Forsythia flowers as they bloomed in the spring to sprinkle on the ground like carpet, leaving trails of sunshine everywhere.
It was in those hidden spaces I HAD met the moon. Peeking at her through the branches and trees as she rose in the Eastern sky. Sleeping in a tent in my backyard waiting for the light, her glowing brightly all the while right outside the nylon door.
Constant yet changing, light and yet dark, she was beauty and magic and I kind of reliability I craved deep in my little girl heart.
So to sit next to a sweetly babbling stream in November so long ago, watching her pass through all of her phases in a night? Was sacred, and as close to understanding the greatness of earth’s mysteries I had ever been up until that point. I bathed in her reddish glow and dipped in the freezing stream in the morning, marvelling at the way steam rose from my own body in waves. Reborn.
There have been eclipses in between then and now. One, my sister very pregnant, showing her belly to the sky. My nephew was born a few short weeks later on, the next full moon. Her moon baby, she calls him. One, on the front step of my city rental, mourning, after losing my mother and struggling through divorce. The night was clear and crisp. And hollow.
And yesterday’s. Asleep in bed with the kids nestled in close, my husband just down the hall. I dreamed of people I knew long ago. Coworkers and friends, relationships both complicated and confusing, close and important, and gone. Things to sort out, memories and moments, things too small and strange to dwell on or grieve under the intense light of day.
There are many cultures, spiritual traditions, and stargazers who say not to look at the moon as she hides. That an eclipse is a dark and sacred thing. That her moment of intimacy in the sky is not for us to cast our eyes upon, curious or worshipping.
And what can we know, really? Here below, worried and wondering. Becoming more ourselves whether we are conscious of it or not. Passing through all our phases, slowly over lifetimes, and sometimes, quickly, like the moon, showing all our faces in a night.
Thank you for listening,
Love,
Natasha
