I know it's been a long silence again... it's been the doldrums.
I had planned another attempt to try and see the Milky Way for the first time in my life, this time from the island of Terschelling. I should have known it was a foolish plan because it's too late a season, but I was in denial of the bleak fact that summer is over and I had to cancel the trip. I think it's the first year in a decade that I haven't been to Amsterdam, and besides the brief overnight bike trip to the Eiffel region I haven't traveled at all this year - and now it's all too late unless I had the money to be able to travel very far south where there's still a bit of warmth, which of course I don't have. (In fact I'm still waiting for a refund from Deutsche Bahn for the canceled trip.)
At least I've seen the "Blood Moon" last night. I first woke up around 3 AM when the dark shadow had started engulfing the top part of the moon's disk. I slept for about another hour, I'd set the alarm for 4 AM to see the start of totality but was awake again a few minutes before the alarm. I watched from the window & balcony for a while, then some idiot neighbor switched on a very bright light outside that was extremely annoying, so I grabbed some long underwear, jacket, boots, gloves, and bike, and went out on the field path. Despite the awful light pollution around I had a pretty good view. The moon looked pretty nice, although a dull, rusty color instead of bright red or orange, but somehow I found myself actually looking more at Orion and the Pleiades, they looked so beautiful. The Swan (Cygnus) was nearly down, low above the western horizon; I could nearly sense again rising from that constellation's vertical axis and then on through Cassiopeia, that's where the band of the Milky Way had to be. With the moon shadowed, if only the surrounding street lighting and occasional headlights could have been blotted out - and with the sky so clear, I'd have been able to see it for real! Once again I couldn't help thinking, what a beautiful world this could be if only it weren't for the human infestation. If only I could choose I'd live in a remote, wild place with no light pollution and no human noise around, where I could see the Milky Way each night if the sky was clear. And also, where the coldest temperature would never fall below 50 F.
It was nearly 6 AM when I got back home but I still went to bed once more to try and warm up again under the blankets. It was already light outside when I got up again, around 7:20, and my hands were still icy.
I had a stupid dream too, about my "grandmother" asking me why the eclipse was already over, as my "mother" had told her it would last for half a year. It was pretty realistic that she might believe such a thing - she was that stupid indeed.
I put in the quotation marks because I don't recognize those people as my "family". I'm glad there's no more contact to any of them - those who remain alive - at least in my waking life. Just the annoying memories remain, and thus the dreams, which is another reason why I seek control of them.
