The moon was with me this morning as I drove to the airport, so early and so long ago now that it seems like another week.
And the moon was with me later, a pale disc as I zoomed down I-66 on my way to school.
The moon is with me still, in this photo (not a very good one, I’m sorry to say), growing ever brighter as I walked through a darkening campus on my way to class.
The moon will be full tomorrow … but it’s hard to see how it could be any fuller.
Now that winter is settling in, it’s decided to give us another dollop of snow to freshen up the batch we received on Monday. Which means I’ve been scanning the clouds.
Yesterday we had a swirled and mottled firmament, a stingy winter sky. Though it was a montage of clearing and melting, the sky kept its distance.
At about 3 in the afternoon, between errands, I looked up and thought: This is all the light we’re going to see. It’s a sober realization but also a practical one. In weather, as in life, it’s good to know what you have.
This morning I awoke to the house at rest, a house that somehow held 22 people for a sit-down Thanksgiving dinner yesterday.
An outside table was pulled in, borrowed chairs were tucked under it, and the best china was pulled from its sleeves, dusted off and actually used.
Today, I could do some Black Friday shopping, I could catch up with classwork …. or, I could do what I most want to do, which is to look out my office window at clouds scudding across the sky.
The Washington and Old Dominion (W&OD) Rails to Trails path was bustling late yesterday when I finally made my way to it. There were runners and walkers and cyclists, mostly the latter zooming by with a brisk warning of “passing on the left.”
I slipped into what I always think of as the “bridle path” part of the trail, the unpaved route that runs alongside the asphalt. But due to the bridges over Herndon and Fairfax County Parkways, I couldn’t always stay on that calmer and less traveled path.
What I could do was to focus on the scenery I passed: the changing colors of the deciduous trees.
The subtle beauty of the shaggy undergrowth … and the sun setting way too early, once again.
Sometimes it seems as if you could will away the marine layer that cloaks this city in the morning, that by walking up and down the hills, through parks and intersections, past coffee shops and markets you could build up enough heat to part the clouds and let the sun shine through.
That’s the way it felt this morning, as I ambled down Pike to Alaskan Way, and headed north … toward Alaska.
I didn’t get that far, of course. Only to Myrtle Edwards Park. But by the time I hiked back up the hill to the hotel, the sun was shining.
In group meditation, we are visualizing creativity as blue sky and a spark of clear spacious light that expands and grows until it covers the universe.
This is easier said than done. Into the mind comes the grocery list, the calendar, the need to notify team members that I’m off today. Blue sky vanishes behind clouds of my own silly making, which is what it always does. Because clouds are almost all of my own making.
But today I’m stepping away from calendar and duties, hoping to spend as much time as possible outside, under the real sky, which is, as it turns out, mostly blue today.
By 3:30 this morning the sky was filled with thunder and rain. But only a few hours earlier, it was illuminated not by lightning but by the intermittent flashes of the Perseid Meteor Shower.
Viewed from the trampoline, which allows for an upturned gaze without a crick in the neck, the stitches of light were surprising and ethereal, each one a gift I didn’t expect to receive. But the best one of all came when I’d only been at my post a few minutes.
It looked more like a artist’s rendering of a comet, with an orange-yellow fireball and a streaking tail that flowed into the velvety darkness. It may have been an “earthgazer,” a type of meteor I only learned about today, known for its longer streak of brightness and most commonly appearing before midnight.
Whatever it was … it — and all the shooting stars I saw last night — took my breath away. They reminded me of the great beyond. They reminded me to look up.
(Photo: Wikipedia)
When walking on clear days I lift up my eyes and am startled by the contrast, the deep beauty of the line where where sky meets foliage. It is a combination only nature could pull off — shades of azure and emerald so brilliant that they would be considered tacky in any other setting.
As I admire the colors I wonder what this place is called. It’s not the horizon because it’s not where earth and sky meet. It’s more of a tree-rizon, where treetop meets firmament.
Whatever it is, it’s looking gorgeous these days.
My classical radio station has begun playing a salute to the sunrise. Every morning at 7:14 (can it really be that late now?) or, eventually, 6:05 (ah, that’s better!), you can hear a flourish of strings and a fanfare of trumpets. Look out the window, the host says, at another glorious sunrise.
I like this because it reminds us of a meteorological miracle, a fact that can be ignored or noticed. We can stay in the darkness or turn toward the light. We can keep our eyes down, staring at our phone, or we can lift them up, to the heavens.
It’s easier to look down. Not just because gravity pulls us this way, but because we are busy. We have work email to check, social media to scan. But looking up just takes a minute, and in that minute we can reorder our day.
