Ex Nihilo

I have office hours now. 

They have evolved over the last month as I have been working to create this habit of writing every day. As you may recall, my “office” is actually my kitchen table. A space that is my nemesis (because its position just inside our backdoor makes it a landing spot for all kinds of crap) but also my creative space so I’ve embellished my end of the table with some objects meant to inspire…a candle, a bowl of random objects in a pottery bowl that I made. And some snacks because a girl’s gotta eat.

Having regular hours (9:00-12:00 on weekdays and whatever I can steal in the afternoon some weekends) has helped my brain become ready to write at the same time each day. It’s a trick a learned from Anne Lamott in her book Bird By Bird. I usually spend the earlier hours – the non-running hours between 5:00 and 9:00 am – on the internet and most days there are a multitude of ideas that pop into my head just from scanning Facebook. Today, I was sure that the enchanted Super Blood Moon last night was going to transform via alchemy into some sort of SUPER POST today. Muses love magic so my confidence was high as I plopped onto the sofa with my iPad.

No such luck. I just didn’t see anything particularly inspiring.  Nothing that maked my legs start twitching causing me to get up and walk over to my laptop. Not as single detail that made me feel like I had something to say. What I did find were no less than 25 pictures of the eclipse from last night. They were mostly blurry and frankly just looked like a regular moon. There was nothing that looked like what I saw.

We had pretty significant cloud cover for most of the evening as the earth moved in between the moon and the sun, so our view was obscured. My husband and I sat patiently (that’s unusual for me) just to catch a glimpse as it occasionally peeked through the clouds. The kids came in and out the back door to try and see it. My dad and I texted back and forth and he shared some of the photos he had captured through clear skies in Northern Virginia. I tried to take some photos myself and had no luck.

As the active eclipsing entered its final minutes, there was a large break in the clouds and my husband and I sat staring as the last sliver of light disappeared leaving only a faint outline on the lower right side of the moon. And then more clouds.

Lots of them.

In fact, as I scanned the night sky to the South, there was nothing but thick clouds moving toward the North…it seemed our view was going to be blocked for some time. I really wanted to watch as the left side of the moon started to emerge (because I was under the impression that things would just keep moving), but it was past my bedtime and I had a 4:15am alarm set for this morning. So I headed off to bed.

As I was lying in bed waiting to become sleepy, I glanced through my Facebook feed to see who else was watching and if anyone had captured any photos. Um…yes. Feed FULL of blurry smartphone photos and comments from friends all over the nation. In Connecticut, it was clear and someone got a pretty good picture. Friends in Texas could see clearly that it was indeed blood red – no picture though. Others in Northwest Arkansas, Florida, Atlanta…all of us watching the same thing through our own filters.

I briefly lamented not being able to capture such a moment on film, but then decided that my particular view had been just for me and I decided to be content with my unique gift from the moon. Then, for a longer moment, I recognized the significance of a single instant in which so many people – separated by so many miles – were all looking up into the same sky at the same object.

All of us contemplating something so rare that it hasn’t happened since I was 9 and won’t happen again until (God willing) I am 75.

I decided to check one last time to see if the other side of the moon was beginning to appear – one final grasp for my own view of this marvelous sight that everyone was looking at. I got out of my nest, walked to the window, and pulled the curtains aside. At first glance, I was disappointed to see nothing where the moon had been before, but as I scanned upward I saw it – because of course it had moved. All the clouds were gone and there was a red, completely eclipsed full moon.

I don’t think the sight itself was particularly extraordinary. I wouldn’t say that it took my breath away or made me want to take a picture of it. It looked like the moon…without the light…tinted red…as with a sepia filter. It certainly was different, but it paled in comparison to the filtered professional photos of blood moons (sans eclipse) that are a dime a dozen on the Internet. Nevertheless, I continued to stare at it…I couldn’t look away.

After lying back down, I actually got back up twice more to look at it, not really knowing why. Was there comfort in this moment of solidarity among all the people who were looking up and seeing the exact same thing? Is that what drew my attention? Was the real magic in the reality that we were all looking at it together? It was a solidarity virus that would spread across the planet overnight like a wave of unity that swept everyone into the same upward gaze.

And it wasn’t everyone watching the same thing on TV at the same time – like a royal wedding or coverage of a disaster. There’s a difference between a large number of people watching a program that is being televised on millions of TV screens and a large number of people in the same room watching the same TV screen. This eclipse was like millions of people in the same room watching the same show on the same gigantic TV screen. We all had different perspectives, but we were all looking directly at the same object with their own eyes.

That’s pretty extraordinary in a world where we are all so focused on what separates us from everyone else.

And it continued throughout the night and into this morning. In North and South America, we saw it at sunset last night. Africa, Europe and the Middle East all awoke early to view it just before sunrise. Everyone gazing upon the same moon, each with a different perspective on it. In some places it was cold and in others, hot. Some places had clouds, others had clear skies. Some were unable to see it at all because of the weather, but still gazed upward toward the moon hoping to join us for the show.

Unanimity. Harmony. Human consonance…Ex Nihilo. Out of Nothing.

Sort of like this blog post. It turns out I did have something to say.