red moon, red moon it could have been you.

my alarm went off at 2:30am and for a moment i felt rebellion and victimization at the same time.  then i remembered that i wanted to be awake at that time.  i tipped my top half off the bed and reached hard for the alarm that sits in the middle of the floor since that day in the summer that i turned my room topsy turvy in search for cool night air.  i couldn't get to it.  i slid my mask off and stumbled out of bed and hit the snooze button and then flicked the alarm off.  why did i leave the alarm so far away, i wondered.  negligent.  i climbed back into my comfort zone--my bed.  my bed has been my haven, my cave for most of the year, my soft and welcoming nothingness.  i almost forgot why i was awake at the ungodly hour but like a flash it came back to me--the eclipse!  i saw a silvery glow out my window towards the right and i scrambled up on my knees and peeked out.  sure enough, just like the astronomer enthusiast described on the radio--a bite was taken out of the moon.  the first curve of our earth's shadow.  i settled back into my bed and flipped my laptop open.  i was waiting for the blood red moon.  the coppery, hunter's moon--the full eclipse.  the next time i looked there was only one bite left--just a tiny sliver, and the fog had rolled in.  richmond loves a moody fall fog.  not now richmond!  it's lunar eclipse day!  so i jumped out of bed, pulled on some clothes, grabbed my camera and went out to the car.  the weather lady on the radio said vancouver would be fog-free.  vancouver, you're so real.  the fog was thick until i got onto the oak street bridge, and i may or may not have driven a teensy bit erratically as i was searching the sky for the red moon, but i mean it was 3:30 in the morning and i was the only car on the bridge, so don't worry.

i'd like to say that i found the red moon, but i didn't. i  drove around for a while to different places to try to get a good view. but the clouds had rolled in on top of the fog and they hogged the red moon viewing to themselves.  i stopped at this neighbourhood park in kerrisdale and at first was alarmed to see the dark shapes of some other people by the park...but they were just other lunar seekers like me and they were packing up.  i glanced up and saw another dark form leaning out of his balcony peering towards the west where the red moon was supposed to be.  red moon you eluded me.

i stopped and mcdonald's for an early morning breakfast treat.

i was back in bed by 4:40 looking at worldwideweb accounts of the eclipse.  i began to feel heavy and warm and i drifted off to sleep.  i didn't come back to the world until 11am.  and i didn't get out of bed until 12:30.

i wandered through my dirty, messy, cluttered, neglected home, thinking about a david grey song and how i wanted to live again but i didn't know where to start.  i gave the crunchies and came back here to write.  i'm getting stronger but my bed is fighting hard to keep me.