I've been waiting to post until I have time to write a full account, but it doesn't seem like I have the luxury of time, so I'll just have to do this in snippets.
Last week I watched the moon cease to exist. The lunar eclipse was very odd, here in Ohio. Unsettling. My friend K and I wandered through Norwood, camping out on one neighbor's porch after another, trying to keep it in sight as it sunk in the sky. When I left the house at 4:50 am, there was already a tiny bite out of the top, like out of a glowing chocolate chip cookie; the bite grew larger and larger as we watched but not very quickly (the earth it moves fast, but not all that fast) so mostly we paid it little attention, we just chatted amongst ourselves. But when there was only a tiny sliver of light left at the bottom, we kept our eyes trained on the moon, even as we had to keep finding higher ground since it was sinking fast into the trees. Then it was red, like a coal after a fire--streaked with red like that. We watched and waited for the sliver of light to return at the top but the earth it is very very large. The sky meanwhile grew lighter, the moon sank lower, and it grew more non-descript. Think of seeing the moon out in daytime, and then imagine the light cast on it by the sun is gone, and you'll get a sense of how not-bright it was. There came a point where we weren't sure we were looking at the moon at all, and so we went home without seeing it return. We wondered if it would ever come back.
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