So, I'm feeling a little tired this morning, as last night I did something I haven't done in a long time. I went to sleep early, but that's not the point. I set my alarm clock for 2 AM and despite the intermittent cloud cover I still lugged my tired ass out of bed and found a comfortable spot outdoors to watch the lunar show. Armed with nothing but a warm hoody and my iPod (and pants. I was wearing pants, damnit,) I laid out under the night sky to contemplate the heavens above and my place among them.
There is something strange about watching the shadow of the Earth slowly (yet perceptibly) move across the surface of the moon, like some negative image cast by our world. If we could magnify the edges of that shadow, would we see moving clouds and atmosphere, or miniscule satellites and space stations orbiting the dark reflection. (we wouldn't, but I am being poetic here.) Our brains are not normally programmed to think beyond the small box of our typical lives. How often do you stop to contemplate the world upon which you stand and its movements through the solar system? Yet, laying under a cloudy/starry sky there is no denying the power of the cosmos and the insignificance of yourself by comparison. (By the way, I know I have been harping on the subject of the cosmos lately, but I mean c'mon, it's amazing.)
So often we see the sky as a flat surface, a background to our lives, unimportant and unmoving. In actuality, we pay more attention to the weather than the stars or the moon, a fact I was also reminded of last night as the time approached 3 AM and the cloud cover finally obscured the lunar event. (Thus, I, unfortunately, did not get to see the moon turn red.) Yet even the movements of the clouds was enough to make me feel the turning of the Earth below me, because the sky above is more than some painted backdrop (like an old Hollywood movie set.) If anything our lives constitute the background for the great cosmic show of the universe. Earth is one planet among eight (or nine,) circling one star among countless stars in a galaxy among countless galaxies. Everyone you have ever known, loved, admired, hated, every emperor, king, president, celebrity, sports star, every beautiful person, every ugly person, every war, every empire, every work of art, every love and heartbreak you have ever suffered, every defeat, and every victory you have ever known or heard of has taken place on this small blue orb, where time (in the cosmic sense) passes as quick as the flutter of a butterfly wing, at least every victory save for one.
On July 20, 1969, human beings set foot on the surface of the moon, the very object I found myself staring up at last night. It was the first truly non-Earthbound victory of mankind, and that event did not escape me as I looked up at the slowly disappearing circle in the sky. I had to keep reminding myself that the moon was a physical place where people could walk, and did. I thought of the things we left behind, the (now sun-bleached) flag, the lower part of the landing modules, the moon buggies, and the other artifacts of human exploration. They were up on that pale white and gray surface somewhere, Earth-made objects left marooned on an alien landscape. We had once crossed the river of space that separates us from our own natural satellite. Yet, it made me sad, because as I looked up at the moon there was no one there to look back at me. In July it will be forty-five years since we first put a foot on the moon's surface. Why did we ever stop?
Located mere inches (by my view) to the right of the bright orb of the moon was the single red dot of Mars, and as spectacular as the moon was, I could not keep my eyes from wandering to that small speck of light either, a drop of blood floating beside a crisp white disc. I thought of the Curiosity rover currently making its robotic journey across the sands of that alien world, so distant that the light reflecting off it was several minutes old by the time it reached my eye. I imagined what it might be like to stand on Mars and see its great canyons, mountains, and river basins. What would the landscape look like from atop Olympus Mons, and how come there is no human alive yet that can describe that for me? Again, I had to keep reminding myself that this point in the sky was also a physical and actual place. It existed, surely as the ground upon which I lay, out there, waiting to be trodden by human feet.
All this made me feel insignificant, not because of the sheer size of the cosmos before me, but because of our lack of ambition to go there. The human race will only stop being small after we have made the effort to grow out from our home. Earth is beautiful and I love it more than anything, but we cannot remain here solely. It is comfortable and warm, like my old bed in our parent's house or that comfortable blanket I once held onto for far longer than I should have, but these are childish things. We need to put aside our comforts and our fears because if we do not expand, I promise you, we will regret it. All this and more passed through my head as I listened to my music and gazed up at a small section of a sky that together held so much promise for humanity... I was also debated getting a Wawa sandwich. I was hungry.
The next blood moon will appear in our skies on October 8 of this year, then again in April and September of 2015, but if you don't catch any of those, you won't have another chance till sometime in 2032.
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