When I learned that there would be a "Blood
Moon" -- actually an eclipse of the moon by the earth's shadow, not
becoming completely dark as light bending around the earth and through the
atmosphere would give it a reddish color -- I wanted to see and photograph
it. But the eclipse was to occur in the
very early morning hours, around 4:00 AM.
Any photograph I would take with the 20x zoom lens on my
little digital, without a tripod, would render it hopelessly unprofessional, so
what's the sense I wondered. Having
planted the seed of getting up at that time to experience the eclipse, I
thought I'd get the camera ready just in case I was actually awake. Hopelessly neurotic though, I knew if I did
that, I'd probably be up at 2.00 AM waiting, so my decision was just to go to
sleep as usual, set no alarm, and enjoy the professional photos I'd see online.
Nonetheless, being but a mere slave to an unforgiving
body clock I woke up at precisely 4.00 AM.
Now I had to find my camera, hope the battery was still sufficiently
charged (it was), and would be able to get something meaningful with my
hand-held. I opened the door to our home's courtyard in the still of the night
and beheld the sight of the blood moon.
Impossible to photograph at 20x zoom just standing there, so I took a
chair from the area near our pool and sat down and propped my elbow, an
improvised tripod. Still the
"target" jumped around on the camera's little LCD screen, trying to
lock in the focus.
However, the best part of sitting there was being in the moment,
putting down my camera from time to time just to take in the sweeping quiet of
the night, not a breath of wind, no sound whatsoever. Just the Blood Moon, Mars, and the stars and
myself looking at the spectacle. After a
while I thought I identified a faint sound, a steady almost imperceptible humming. It wasn't traffic far off on I95 or the
Florida Turnpike -- too early given its continuous nature. It was the
electricity running through the wires and transformers on the street, the only
man-made sound, not noticeable above the normal din of day.
Although there are much better photos of the event almost
anyplace one searches, I offer up a couple of mine as they are my own record as
posted in this modest blog. I particularly
like the one of the moon and mars (to the far right, a little red dot), as it
defines our insignificance in relation to the cosmos.
And I'll add this blog to that definition, just a
kaleidoscopic record of one person's late-life journey. I've been writing this, now, for some six and
a half years and this entry marks my 400th.
If one searches "blogging" or "writing" among the
labels to the left, there is plenty of content as to why I try to keep this up. It all stems from the title of the blog, the
essence of the word, "lacuna."
