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February 22, 2008
The Moon in Two Frames
Until this past week, I had only seen one other Lunar Eclipse. The experiences of both of them were vastly different. The first, I was in Jerusalem and I was standing on top of a my apartment building because it was new and they still hadn't locked the rook access.
We heard that the moon would be turning red and ran to the roof. We lived on a mountain northeast of the city center. From where we stood, we had free visual access to the Dome of the Rock and the Old City.
I had never lived on a mountain before and one of my favorite parts about it was that you live closer to the clouds. They move faster when you feel like you could reach out and touch them. That night, they were running in and out of the sky and we would reach out and move them out of the way when they obscured the moon.
As I looked out over the Holy City and the moon turned red, I felt like I had seen this scene before and then realized where that inspiration came from. When younger, I read everyone of these books:
Yikes.
I thought about grabbing my Bible and sneaking it up to the roof that night. Pulling it out and presenting a dramatic reading of Revelation 6 which in verse 12 says, "I watched as he opened the sixth seal. There was a great earthquake. The sun turned black like sackcloth made of goat hair, the whole moon turned blood red." I decided against it. It may have come on a little too strong. We stayed on the roof for a solid half hour expecting the moon to do something exciting, but it just stayed dark and maroon.
The eclipse this past week was entirely different. I was in Ann Arbor. I was invited to go watch the eclipse at the Observatory. It was way to cold to even consider going outside for the luxury of watching an eclipse. When it happened my roommate Vasav 
called me into his room which has a view of the moon in the east. We opened the blinds had to lean in close to the window so that we could see over the house next door. As the window fogged, I said, "Cool. Well back to work," and exited the room.
The same event in two different places and two completely different ways of experiencing it. In Ann Arbor, it was cold and scientific, which for me led it to be much less exciting. In Jerusalem, there was something prophetic to look at. Some kind of holiness was at stake. This wasn't just the fact that the earth was currently passing in between the sun and moon which therefore gave the moon a reddish hue as it passed through the umbra. The moon was mystical and shrouded in fast moving clouds.
Posted by johlinco at February 22, 2008 09:25 AM
Comments
Absolutely (and ordinarily I wouldn't say this; you wouldn't know that i'd said this because I would delete the word that in other circumstances, other interactions, I wouldn't even use, but forces and variables are at work here, reconfiguring that limits and range of viable choices for expression, reinstating some iteration of the "absolute," so being so marked, deleting the word wouldn't delete the effects of the fold, so) Absolutely
beautiful: "Some kind of holiness was at stake. This wasn't just the fact that the earth was currently passing in between the sun and moon which therefore gave the moon a reddish hue as it passed through the umbra. The moon was mystical and shrouded in fast moving clouds."
For me, thy mystical and the holiness you mention are iterations of imagination which I consider, well, in this context, absolutely powerful, sacred in its ability to construct realities, to overcome restrictions
and I consider the fork a tool of holiness in its preference to, well, fork, lift something, catch something on its tines and investigate the temporary union, the momentary convergence.
Bead by bead there is touch, there is a bringing together that holds --even holds me in awe.
This post on which I comment is about holding, staying "dark and maroon," also beautiful, in apparent descent as in apparent ascent, directions that in the holding in space are so similar, sometimes apparently interchangeable.
Thanks for an absolute beauty that held --absolutely-- for a time.
Posted by: thyliasm at March 11, 2008 06:11 AM
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