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.
TGIF: I see the bad moon a-rising
April 15, 2022 by 36 Comments
I’ve run away but I find the moon everywhere I go
March 27, 2022 by 27 Comments
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:
- Waning Crescent Moon (25%). DK @ Cove Island Park, 37° F. 5:33 a.m. Sunday, March 27, 2022. More Photos from this morning here.
- Book Review of “The Instant” in The Guardian
54 minutes. Bada-Bing-Bada…
February 15, 2022 by 31 Comments
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.
Walking. What you hold, holds you. (Again)
November 20, 2021 by 34 Comments
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
November 19, 2021 by 25 Comments
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.
Walking. With Tu Fu.
October 23, 2021 by 16 Comments
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…]
5:00 P.M. Bell! S-1 & S-2
September 24, 2021 by 26 Comments
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 or Moon 2 (Calvatia gigantea)?
September 21, 2021 by 25 Comments
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.)
Monday Morning Wake-Up Call
September 20, 2021 by 32 Comments
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:
- Photo: DK with Waxing Gibbous Moon. 8:46 pm. September 19, 2021.
- Thank you Anneli for the one gratitude a day inspiration.
Crescent Moon 2
September 12, 2021 by 23 Comments
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:
- Photo: DK @ Twilight. 8:00 pm. 78° F. September 12, 2021 (@dkct25 @ Instagram)
- Crescent Moon #1: “….that which you hold holds you.”
that which you hold holds you
September 11, 2021 by 30 Comments
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
June 10, 2021 by 48 Comments
“Ring of Fire” Solar Eclipse. DK @ Daybreak. 5:46 am, June 10, 2021. 70° F. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT.
Saturday Morning
June 5, 2021 by 30 Comments
Spring Night
March 28, 2021 by 21 Comments
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:
- Photo by DK: Mar 28 2020. 2:34 A.M. 46° F. Backyard.
- Poem: Thank you Beth @ (via Alive on All Channels)
Breathe into me
February 28, 2021 by 27 Comments
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
Monday Morning Wake-Up Call
February 8, 2021 by 22 Comments
— Mary Oliver, from “Consequences”, Dream Work
Notes:
- Quote Source: WeltenWellen.
- Photo: DK, Daybreak. 6:36 am Jan 29, 2021. 13° F, feels like minus 4° F, wind gusts up to 38 mph. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT.
Cold Moon
December 28, 2020 by 28 Comments
“The moonlight through the windshield. No one talks.”
~ Jenny Offill, Weather: A Novel (Knopf, February 11, 2020)
Notes:
- Photo: DK. 6:35 p.m. Dec 28, 2020
- “December’s Cold Moon reaches peak illumination on Tuesday, December 29, 2020, at 10:30 P.M. EST. Why is it called the Cold Moon? The Moon names we use in The Old Farmer’s Almanac come from Native American, Colonial American, or other traditional sources passed down through generations. A variety of Native American societies traditionally used the monthly Moons and nature’s corresponding signs as a calendar to track the seasons. Today, December’s full Moon is most commonly known as the Cold Moon—a Mohawk name that conveys the frigid conditions of this time of year, when cold weather truly begins to grip us. Other names that allude to the cold and snow include Drift Clearing Moon (Cree), Frost Exploding Trees Moon (Cree), Moon of the Popping Trees (Oglala), Hoar Frost Moon (Cree), Snow Moon (Haida, Cherokee), and Winter Maker Moon (Western Abenaki). From The Old Farmer’s Almanac: “Full Moon For December 2020“.
Lightly Child, Lightly
October 8, 2020 by 12 Comments
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:
- Christopher Beha’s “The Index of Self-Destructive Acts: A Novel” is a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award
- Photo: NASA picture of earth (Smithsonian Magazine)
- Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.”
It’s been a long day
November 12, 2019 by 44 Comments
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
Notes:
- Photo: Not Mine. Phoenix, AZ. Moon last night (Nov 11, 2019). Amazing shot by Beverly Thornburgh.
- Quote via The Vale of Soul Making
- Related Posts: It’s been a long day
How many moons have I been too busy to notice?
October 15, 2019 by 18 Comments
Notes:
- Photograph of Hunter’s Moon: By Eric Kanigan, from our front yard on October 14, 2019
- Inspired by: “How many moons have I been too busy to notice? Full moons, half moons, quarter moons facing those thousands of suns, watching them bringing the years up, one piece at a time. Even the dark phases of moon after moon, gray stoppers plugged into a starry sky, letting a little light leak out around the edges. By my reckoning, almost a thousand full moons have passed above me know, and I have been too busy and self-absorbed to be thankful for more than a few, though month after month they have patiently laid out my shadow, that velvety cloak that in the moonlit evenings waits for me.” ~ Ted Kooser, January. The Wheeling Year: A Poet’s Field Book (UNP – Nebraska, 2014).
Live & Learn 