it really annoyed me on wednesday when everyone was talking about the lunar eclipse from the night before. how can there be an eclipse on a crescent moon?
oh. right.
THERE CAN’T BE.
i read the Torontoist blog everyday and was thankful to whoever that guy “Drew” is, for clearing up the matter. i am jealous of whoever took the photo in the post because not only could i not get a decent shot, but i couldn’t get venus in there with it for the life of me.
anyway, i hope most of you got to see our pretty moon. i made everyone in my house run outside in their socks. i messaged my friends far away and was satisfied to later find out that they each obeyed my text-commands to go seek out the moon, without any reluctance.
looking up into the sky has always been one of my favourite things to do. it sounds silly, but it’s true. i cannot remember the first time i ever did it, but i do remember the first time i realised i was doing it.
i was 6 and lying on the grass in front of my childhood home. the girls from across the street were lying next to me and i was thinking how strange it was that their hair smelt exactly like their house. it was late august and it was the time of night when you knew you should be going to bed soon but because it was summer or because the sun just wouldn’t go down or because your parents were busy talking to their friends or because they could see how happy you were, you were allowed to play outside until the coolness of the night calmed you down and made you feel accomplished. i had pre-butterflies [almost there but not quite] because i was finally becoming good friends with those girls but i could tell by the wind that school was around the corner and it wouldn’t be until next summer, if even, that things would be the same again. i decided it didn’t matter too much and turned to look at each of their faces, one at at time, to make sure they were still looking at the sky [maybe hoping they weren't worrying, like me]. they were, and that made me happy. i smiled at the sky and went back to watching the clouds move slowly across it, over our houses, over the path to the park, then over the train tracks where the girls suspected their dog met his girlfriend every night, and then finally over the swamp where a few years later, their dog would die. anything further than that was foreign ground and i wondered how far the clouds would go and how many people would see them. the clouds seemed to move faster the longer i watched them and i started to feel dizzy and swore to the girls that i could feel the earth rotate. it was the first time i realised i was lying down on the surface of a planet. the sky expanded and i got dizzier and smaller, and i suddenly felt like i must finally know what it means to be a human. the grass was prickly on my bare legs just then and so i concluded my epiphany and lifted my legs towards the sky. i imagined the clouds were like stepping stones and the rest of the sky was like water. the girls seemed to understand and lifted their legs in the air too. 2 pink shoes, 2 white shoes with neon green laces and two strappy sandals [the kind my mother would never let me get] tiptoed along the sky until our visions were interrupted by the smell of the popcorn that one of our parents’ set,in a bowl, behind our heads.
looking back into the sky has never been quite the same since, but it still makes me feel at home.
these days i tend to look up at the sky on my walk from work to the station. skyscrapers in toronto are a different kind of awesome to look up at, and it has almost become a game for me to see how many people i can get to look up to see what i’m looking at.
it is merely spring and i am already prepared for summer. something about summer makes it ok for me to lie down anywhere i so desire and just lie and look and lie and look, and remember what it means to be a human on earth.
in a dream world, le petit prince and i would be best friends.
+ happy [belated] first day of spring!
+ “BELAK BELAK BELAK BELAK” [yes, i'm a sucker.]
+ the moon [fun site: spaceweather.com]
