Notes:
- Post Title: “Bad Moon Rising” by Creedence Clearwater Revival.
- DK Photo: Moon. Waxing Gibbous Phase (93%). 52° F. 4:00 a.m. April 15, 2022.
Notes:
I’ve been getting text messages from the moon. A note flashes on my phone, asking if the moon can track my location, and I consent.
I have moved to a new city but the moon is following me around. It texts to tell me when it will be out. Through the windows, there is just a parallelogram of sky at the top of the courtyard, only a small space to catch the passing moon on certain clear nights…
The app uses my location to tell me the moon’s phase, direction, distance at all times. Right now, the moon is 384,012 miles away from my hand, which is holding my phone close to my heart, as I sit at the table in the narrow kitchen of this flat with tall windows in an old-style apartment block, stinging nettles by the front door. I’m just home from work, vibrating with tiredness. The moon is waxing gibbous and is 25.2 degrees above the horizon, almost due east. It rose just after midday and will set around 3 a.m…
The internet is hectic and I go to the moon to relax, opening new browser tabs for the moon’s Wikipedia page and Google Maps of its surface. I follow new lunar developments from NASA. I learn that the moon was probably once part of the earth, sheared off by an asteroid. B, who moved from Scotland to Tasmania, tells me that there is a different moon in the southern hemisphere: it waxes and wanes in the opposite direction. I learn that the moon is slowing down the earth’s rotation. The moon is holding on to us…
I’ve run away but I find the moon everywhere I go…
The lunar cycles are almost all I have in my diary for the year. My future is blank but I know what the moon will be doing…
People in this town can’t commit to anything, but the moon is always orbiting and the months pass relentlessly. I don’t speak the language but I know ‘der Mond’. My attachment to the moon grew during the years I’ve been lonely and so did the moon’s attachment to me. The moon, I tell B, is my boyfriend.
— Amy Liptrot, from her Prologue titled “February Hunger Moon” in The Instant (Canongate Books, March 3, 2022)
Notes:
DK @ Daybreak @ Cove Island Park. Feb 15, 2022. 13° F, feels like 4° F. Full Moon @ 6:09 a.m. Sunrise @ 7:03 a.m. More photos from this morning here.
5:45 a.m, and I’m out the door. Dark Sky app says 36° F, feels like 34°, and I call bullsh*t on that. No chance. My finger tips are tingling, a mere handful of steps into my daybreak walk.
But I’m ready. Come and get some of This. Long johns, wool socks, double lined sweatpants, hoody, tuk (tuuuuuuk), a winter coat sewn by one of Dale’s relatives in Northern Quebec, and Norwegian Merino wool gloves. Because Norwegian’s know cold. And, caution flags are flying, need to avoid public areas looking like this, a threat, and get cut down by an AR-15.
What’s good about Cold? It keeps the Chatty’s out of the park. And today, even the regulars are absent. It’s me, and the Herons, Queen’s Guards, stoic, standing in ice cold water, winds gusting off Long Island Sound. Just the way we like it.
94 snaps taken this morning, and that one above has stuck. 92 better shots, but this one won’t let go. It’s the Full moon watching me traipse around the muck in low tide. Robbins: “She wondered how the moon, two hundred and thirty-nine thousand miles above…could affect her as profoundly as it did…Yet, as any half-awake materialist knows, that which you hold holds you.” [Read more…]
Beaver Moon. 4:45 & 5:04 am, November 15, 2021. 43° F, feels like 36° F. Gusty. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT.
The longest partial lunar eclipse in 580 years. Thank you Lori for tuning me in.
53° F. 5:59 a.m. Thursday, October 21st.
Cove Island Park walk @ daybreak.
534 (almost) consecutive mornings. Like in a row.
I walk. Sort of.
One hour before sunrise. Deep in the Twilight Zone.
When One just can’t leave well enough alone, One pays. Advil PM & Tylenol PM have worked for 10+ years. Man Child thinks he could save a few bucks with Amazon’s private label “Basic Care Sleep Aid” tablets. Teeny, tiny, blue egg shell pills. I mean tiny. How much damage can they possibly do?
And so here we are.
Think of your first step after exiting the Salt & Pepper Shaker @ Six Flags Great Adventure.
But it’s a full 2 hours later.
World is spinning.
Stomach begs Mercy!
Each.Step.Must.Be.Deliberate.
Easy does it DK. Easy does it.
The head and the body not of this earth. Not on this earth. [Read more…]
S-1 (Sully) and S-2 (Shroooooommmmm aka Giant Puffball Mushroom @ 1 week’s growth). (DK Photo @ 2:30 p.m. today). Initial post on our Giant Puffball here.
Moon 1: Waning Gibbous Moon @ 6:32 a.m. today @ Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT
Moon 2: Giant Puffball Mushroom. A mere 4 days of growth. And note the satellite mini puffball moon circling Mama in front of it. (Photo: 7:04 A.M. this morning.)
Experience one beautiful thing a day. However small. However trivial. Read a poem. Play a favorite song. Laugh with a friend. Gaze at the sky just before the sun’s final tumble toward night. Watch a classic movie. Eat a slice of lemon drizzle cake. Whatever. Just give yourself one simple reminder that the world is full of wonders. Even if we are at a point in life where we can’t appreciate things, it sometimes helps to remember there are things in this world to enjoy, when we are ready.
— Matt Haig, with “One Beautiful Thing” in “The Comfort Book” (Penguin Life, July 6, 2021)
Notes:
And out the windows the sky was still dimming, darkening, the vast earth turning slowly on its axis… Outside, astronomical twilight. Crescent moon hanging low over the dark water. Tide returning now with a faint repeating rush over the sand. Another place, another time.
— Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You: A Novel (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, September 7, 2021)
Notes:
She wondered how the moon, two hundred and thirty-nine thousand miles above the roof, could affect her as profoundly as it did. Being four times larger than the moon, the earth appeared to dominate. Caught in the earth’s gravitational web, the moon moved around the earth and could never get away. Yet, as any half-awake materialist well knows, that which you hold holds you. Neither could the earth escape the moon.
— Tom Robbins, Still Life With Woodpecker: A Novel (Bantam; June 17, 2003)
DK with Crescent Moon. Waxing Crescent Phase. 7:38 pm, September 11, 2021. 71° F. (@dkct25 on Instagram)
“Ring of Fire” Solar Eclipse. DK @ Daybreak. 5:46 am, June 10, 2021. 70° F. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT.
DK @ Daybreak: 4:38, 4:48 & 4:59 am, June 5, 2021. 62° F. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT.
The few minutes of a Spring night are worth ten thousand pieces of gold.
The perfume of the flowers is so pure.
The shadows of the moon are so black.
— Su Dongpo, (1037-1101) from “Spring Night” in “One Hundred Poems from the Chinese.” Trans. Kenneth Rexroth.
Notes:
At night I open the window and ask
the moon to come and press its
face against mine.
Breathe into me.
— Rumi, excerpt of Some Kiss We Want (tr. by Coleman Barks)
Photo: DK @ Rowayton Beach, Norwalk, CT. 7:30 to 7:45 PM. 43° F. Saturday Feb 27, 2020
— Mary Oliver, from “Consequences”, Dream Work
Notes:
“The moonlight through the windshield. No one talks.”
~ Jenny Offill, Weather: A Novel (Knopf, February 11, 2020)
Notes:
Life should carry more meaning than the facts would bear. Which facts were these: we occupied a tiny corner of the universe, minor planet orbiting a minor star, in an even tinier corner of cosmological time. Still we wanted all of it, the sun and the moon and the firmament that held them, to be about us. This want had been bred into humanity, selected by nature, so it must have served some purpose once, but it had long outlived its usefulness… What was needed now was to know.
— Christopher Beha, The Index of Self-Destructive Acts: A Novel (Tin House Books, May 5, 2020)
Notes:
Phoenix, AZ.
Visiting Brother.
Time: Now.
I was inspired by the full Moon over the Camelback Mountains the night before.
I was further inspired by a Moon quote from a Murakami book that I came across this morning.
So much inspiration is grist for a blog post. As the bio suggests, if it moves me, it goes up. No other criteria required. Full stop.
Tell my Brother that I’m going out to take some shots of the Moon with my Smartphone. How hard can it possibly be, right?
I step outside.
I walk a block looking in all directions.
Then I walk a second block. It was a cloudless day in Phoenix. How hard can it be? Pretty damn hard without the Moon.
I get in car. I drive 5 miles east. Why East? Because the Sun Rises in the East. So Moon must be East. Does this make any sense? It gets Dark, the Moon is there. Does it rise at all?
I could have Googled it before I left (“Does the Moon Rise? “What time does the Moon rise in Phoenix today?”)
But, WTH would I do that for?
In 50+ years, it has never dawned on me that the Moon wouldn’t be there waiting for me when it was dark on a cloudless night.
I drive back. Wow. Empty handed. Embarrassing and beyond.
“What took so long?”
“I couldn’t find the Moon?”
“You’ve got to be kidding?’
“No Moon.”
“OK Smart a**. Does the Moon rise or is it just there?”
He has no clue either. Same root, same stock. Makes sense.
He’s watching me write this Post. He’s staring, wondering: “You aren’t really going to tell the world that you don’t know Jack about the Moon are you?”
Apparently I’m going to do exactly that. Yep.
I’m connected to my own reality here.
“We’re both looking at the same moon, in the same world. We’re connected to reality by the same line. All I have to do is quietly draw it towards me.”
~ Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart
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