Unabashed

Wrapped in full darkness in the middle of the exceptionally silent forest as the eclipse began: deadstill. I lay down on the cold uneven ground, staring up for the calm extravaganza, imagining the blaze of sun on the far side of the world, brilliantly encompassing half the globe where life is shrill, humanity volatile, sweating. Reaching past Mother Earth and touching the pale white moon, sunlight was still a tangible thing, a thing I could inspect, collect in a small wooden box, if only in moonbeams. The moon, a tiny speck of luminescence in the Sea of Liquid Infinity, was creeping behind Earth’s shadow to hide.

Gradually the invisible life around me, the hiding, silent masses, began to liven, becoming an outburst as the eclipse progressed. Unsettled critters, scurrying chirping clucking clicking mewling screeching, howling. The tempo of my heartbeat intensified; I didn’t have their senses; I didn’t know what was wrong. All I could see was the purple hue of that which is always white, fading to black, blotting to nothingness. I couldn’t conceive of why it would affect them as it did; all the same, it excited me. It made me remember that, as an animal, I am quite stupid. I don’t feel the palpitations of mother nature, I’m not in tune with the discord of the universe, I can’t experience oneness with the everlasting, like they can. I was a separate, singular entity, soaking up the experience like rainfall, not really wanting it to end.

Soon the moon crept back into the light, and the normal pace of life resumed, for them. For me, it never altered course. The soft night buzzing, a pleasant but cacophonous melody of the still and invisible and multitudinous, pleasing night sounds to accompany me back along the moonlit path, the bone-white glow of the full moon all around me.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: full moon, lunar eclipse, moon, night, wildlife