Through the windshield of a car moving eighty down the interstate, I see a large orange disk flickering in the branches of city trees. At first my eye files it under "disk-shaped antenna hanging on transmitter tower", in the class of things that are white by day and dyed orange by streetlights at night. But though it's got the flatness and the color, it's the wrong size (far too large) and we cannot leave it behind, it hangs there in the east, unmoving and impossible to lose.
What color, and such size. And me without my tripod. That low on the horizon, the moon moves fast. There's no time to run by the house and get the tripod, then get to Libby Hill Park and set it up to get a shot. Even without the clouds nibbling away the top of the disk, soon to hide it, the moon would have risen high enough to lose its color by then. I can only watch the moon as she plays a game of hide and seek among the trees and buildings.
The clouds forecast for earlier today have formed a thick blank dome over the city and left only a little clarity at the edges. As the moon rises higher, hopes that the clouds are thinner in the east, enough to let the moon shine through anyway, are dashed. Those clouds over there are downright aggressive and some ill wind whips them into fearsome shapes. A black claw ("It's the Black Rooster of Death!") reaches out and rakes the moon up into the clouds and out of sight.
268 words | March 7, 2004 08:57 PM | Real true story