Oct 07 2006
I Rear-Ended The Moon
I was coming home, driving down this very busy street. It’s been a while since I’ve driven in the dark on a Saturday night. I am usually hunkered in at home or driving on quieter streets.
I was City Driving. It had been so long since I’d city driven at night that I was actually startled to look in my side-view mirror to see a long string of headlights behind me.
Have you ever reflected one mirror into another? You feel a bit disoriented, as if you’ve glimpsed infinity and your mind doesn’t quite get it. That’s how I felt looking at that line of headlights – they appeared to stretch into infinity. I quickly looked at the string of taillights ahead of me.
It came as a relief when I got off the busy streets.
As I swung off onto this very quiet darkened street, I nearly rear-ended the moon. It just hung there, massive in the sky.
I was totally surprised to see it there. It was like rounding a corner and seeing the back end of a semi-truck. WHAM to the senses.
It really did knock me upside the head. In a very good way.
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Tonight’s moon was a Waning Gibbous – 98% Full
It looked to me like the same moon here in Ohio as where you are. I was driving down a quiet two lane through green country with some Amish farms. I was thinking of the Amish that often drive their buggies and I have never felt so close to going to joining the Amish as lately the way they have come through the horror in Penna. It shocked even the city dwellers – just as we thought we had become callous to all the violence in the paper, those killings were worse. I did see two young men in black walking by the road under the trees, jauntily and somehow carefree. Those woods look much like you would imagine the woods looked 100 years ago or 1000. They had black suits and round straw hats, no beards (that would mean they are unmarried) and one turned as i sped by, and i though that he had the face of an angel. I went up and down hills and the moon seemed to rise and fall among the trees. But the huge moon of 6 PM had become small and normal. Bad as my driving is, and it really is, I did not actually rear end it. On the east coast I guess it would be a head-on collision- you know? [Note: comment has been edited by the moderator]
What a beautiful description of your drive through Amish country – I was right there in the car with you.
Very witty with respect to the head-on collision reference. Yes, if I’m rear-ending the moon in the west, then it would make sense that you’d be having a head-on collision in the east! However, I automatically thought rear-ending as opposed to head-on. Must be something to do with being mooned…