Just came in from watching the lunar eclipse, nicely scheduled for the early evening here in eastern Australia. Perhaps 100 people gathered on a windswept hill near my house, and watched it over the Sydney skyline.
For an astronomical event, the effect was surprisingly earthy. In the shadow of the earth, the three large craters went dark while the rest took on a reddish-brown tone that brought out the roughness of the surface. A familiar rock from the desert, up in the sky.
Just after the shadow went full, and again just before the light returned, the image seemed to flash or pulse. Not a perfect mathematical pulse, but random, as though we were seeing the through a wisp of curtain tossed by the faintest of breezes. My friend and I discussed explanations, something about how light refracts through the atmosphere on the edge of earth's shadow, but as I get older poetic explanations matter more than scientific ones. I'll forget the geometry and remember the curtain, randomly waving in the pale red light.
The end of an eclipse is the real test of an observer. We expect stories to develop gradually and end with a bang. Eclipses end just as slowly as they began. What human story can match this perfect symmetry of beginning and end, as though time were just another dimension of space? My friend and I both craned our necks dutifully, and tried out various prostrate postures on the grass, eyes fixed on the glowing edge of the moon. Was it getting brighter, really, or were we just seeing our knowledge that it should be getting brighter? This moment is pure imminence, I thought. Like sex you mean? No, exactly not like sex. Exactly.