A Damp Squib
04/04/2015 11:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
izmeinaIt’s such a common theme that it’s barely worth mentioning anymore. Most of the great delights in life are random unexpected events while those much anticipated, plotted and planned for turn out to be big disappointments. It seems to be the very act of anticipation itself with its imagining of infinite wonderful possibilities that precipitates the unhappy ending.
Good Friday’s rising moon was a pretty pink thing. In spite of finding a place with a reasonable stretch of horizon facing east and knowing the exact time of the moon rising, I still managed to miss its slink above the horizon. Even with a binoculars I was not able to find it for a good twenty minutes. It was a pale pink blob and easily missed due to the presence of daylight. That was a bit of a disappointment not to catch it crossing the horizon since it’s been a very long time since that has happened. But there were other distractions such as a street filled with spooky fig trees and an old historical cemetery which compensated for such minor disappointments.
I also had in my bag two bunya pine babies which were a wonderful discovery. The park with the monster bunya nut tree instead of being chaotic and messy with nuts and leaves strewn all over the ground had been raked like some Zen monk had been there and there was not a nut to be found. But I did find two seedlings hiding in the undergrowth and since the whole point of collecting the nuts is hoping to grow them, this was the perfect opportunity to adopt them.
But never mind. Will be able to do it all again next day for the official full moon with the added benefit of a lunar eclipse tossed in as well.
So that was something for a star gazing serpent to get excited about. There was also a street festival on the same day. As well as being free, it’s also usually very good. So I took to recalling a whole bunch of wonderful Easter Saturdays with sunshine, festivals and lots of coffee and good books.
Easter Saturday in this part of the world is nearly always a gorgeous sunny crisp and crunchy day. It just feels so very different than most other Saturdays. Most folks are in party mode, lounging, lurking and very relaxed.
It was a bad omen to wake up to a grey cloudy muggy day. Along with a cloudy foggy head, things were not looking too good. In spite of staying away from the infernal caffeine bean, still felt all on edge, agitated and irritable. Maybe it is the moon after all. But if the clouds keep up those antics it will be nowhere to be seen.
It just seemed impossible to snap out of it. The Rats provided some distraction and the occasional serpent smile but it seemed the mood meter for the day was set to cranky and miserable and no adorable furballs would disturb the equilibrium for long. Reading and later listening to the radio also did not do the trick like they usually do.
By 5.30 it was time to reconsider the original plan of finding a spot looking east to view the moonrise at 6pm. By that stage it was too late to expect the cloudy skies to miraculously transform just to keep a bunch of moon watchers happy. May as well just catch the bus to the ma’s place and watch the total eclipse phase from her back garden.
Spent the thirty minutes on the bus gazing intently towards the east. Some 20 minutes after official moonrise time, I was still unable to see the big fat yellow cheesy beast. Those old beady eyes just ain’t what they used to be. Eventually there was a trace of a faint pale yellow blob in the clouds. It had to be the moon as there was nothing else it could be.
I was at Petunia’s place as planned, sitting in the garden toasting to the total eclipse. By then the amorphous blob had simply disappeared. No shrinking sliver of moon, no red crescent to be seen. Just an everyday autumn cloudy sky.
There were folks at the old astronomical observatory in the city who had paid 33 silver sickles to attend a lunar eclipse party. I was glad not to have been tempted.
The previous week I attended the annual Astrofest so had a feast of moon watching, star gazing and watching geeks doing light sabre fights. It’s like Comic con on the cheap with lots less costumes and lots more kids. So it was much easier than usual to resist the allure of the Observatory on the hill in the city.
So it’s time to put the binoculars away for another month.
Good Friday’s rising moon was a pretty pink thing. In spite of finding a place with a reasonable stretch of horizon facing east and knowing the exact time of the moon rising, I still managed to miss its slink above the horizon. Even with a binoculars I was not able to find it for a good twenty minutes. It was a pale pink blob and easily missed due to the presence of daylight. That was a bit of a disappointment not to catch it crossing the horizon since it’s been a very long time since that has happened. But there were other distractions such as a street filled with spooky fig trees and an old historical cemetery which compensated for such minor disappointments.
I also had in my bag two bunya pine babies which were a wonderful discovery. The park with the monster bunya nut tree instead of being chaotic and messy with nuts and leaves strewn all over the ground had been raked like some Zen monk had been there and there was not a nut to be found. But I did find two seedlings hiding in the undergrowth and since the whole point of collecting the nuts is hoping to grow them, this was the perfect opportunity to adopt them.
But never mind. Will be able to do it all again next day for the official full moon with the added benefit of a lunar eclipse tossed in as well.
So that was something for a star gazing serpent to get excited about. There was also a street festival on the same day. As well as being free, it’s also usually very good. So I took to recalling a whole bunch of wonderful Easter Saturdays with sunshine, festivals and lots of coffee and good books.
Easter Saturday in this part of the world is nearly always a gorgeous sunny crisp and crunchy day. It just feels so very different than most other Saturdays. Most folks are in party mode, lounging, lurking and very relaxed.
It was a bad omen to wake up to a grey cloudy muggy day. Along with a cloudy foggy head, things were not looking too good. In spite of staying away from the infernal caffeine bean, still felt all on edge, agitated and irritable. Maybe it is the moon after all. But if the clouds keep up those antics it will be nowhere to be seen.
It just seemed impossible to snap out of it. The Rats provided some distraction and the occasional serpent smile but it seemed the mood meter for the day was set to cranky and miserable and no adorable furballs would disturb the equilibrium for long. Reading and later listening to the radio also did not do the trick like they usually do.
By 5.30 it was time to reconsider the original plan of finding a spot looking east to view the moonrise at 6pm. By that stage it was too late to expect the cloudy skies to miraculously transform just to keep a bunch of moon watchers happy. May as well just catch the bus to the ma’s place and watch the total eclipse phase from her back garden.
Spent the thirty minutes on the bus gazing intently towards the east. Some 20 minutes after official moonrise time, I was still unable to see the big fat yellow cheesy beast. Those old beady eyes just ain’t what they used to be. Eventually there was a trace of a faint pale yellow blob in the clouds. It had to be the moon as there was nothing else it could be.
I was at Petunia’s place as planned, sitting in the garden toasting to the total eclipse. By then the amorphous blob had simply disappeared. No shrinking sliver of moon, no red crescent to be seen. Just an everyday autumn cloudy sky.
There were folks at the old astronomical observatory in the city who had paid 33 silver sickles to attend a lunar eclipse party. I was glad not to have been tempted.
The previous week I attended the annual Astrofest so had a feast of moon watching, star gazing and watching geeks doing light sabre fights. It’s like Comic con on the cheap with lots less costumes and lots more kids. So it was much easier than usual to resist the allure of the Observatory on the hill in the city.
So it’s time to put the binoculars away for another month.
