Blood Moon Rising

Super Moon Blood Moon Lunar Eclipse 9/27/15 photo by Kevin Tomasello

Harvest moon, blood moon, total lunar eclipse, supermoon: all this happened at once this month. The moon was its closest to the Earth on September 27 to 28th, causing its greatest gravitational pull on our planet and offering a rare view of our nearest orbiting neighbor. A super moon is the closest full moon to the earth, which makes for a gigantic luminescent orb as it rises in the darkening sky. Although the term blood moon denotes gothic images of werewolves, vampires, and witches, its scientific meaning is less dramatic. A blood moon is a relatively new term for the fourth total lunar eclipse in a tetrad: four total lunar eclipses separated by six full moons (six months) with no partial eclipses between. According to Earth and Sky earthsky.org,  the term blood moon carries religious significance as a prophesy for the end of time. I'll let you read more about that on their website, but there seem to be so many signs of the end of days that I wonder if these days are in fact much longer than our 24 hour days? In any event, it makes for a spectacular night image with associated chills up one's spine. This moon also has the distinction of being a harvest moon: the full moon that shines closest to the autumnal equinox. The brightness of this full moon supposedly allowed farmers to work at peak harvest late into the night. Great story fodder, in any event!

I've been feeling the gravitational pull of my writing. It's been a struggle lately, juggling an increasingly stressful full time job with the utter need to write. Most of my days and nights are spent piecemeal: tiny morsels of time spent on projects that scream for intense, in-depth immersion. I find myself desperate for any tidbits of distracting creativity: a line of a poem, a musical phrase, quiet solitude for contemplation and gazing at my toenails, searching for the right words to lay down on the page. Any writing accomplished is like blood-letting: laborious, scrutinized, depressing, a strangled glut of words choked from a moldy gourd. Recently, a pleasant, although obviously non-writer gentleman informed me that he didn't see the problem with writing a book. "You just come up with an outline and write it out, don't you?" I nodded, teeth clenched, head wobbling like a pumpkin on a corn stalk. If it were that easy, I suppose I would have a thousand books by now. Perhaps, a book should appear easily written, like a doctor who breezes in for a five minute visit with his or her patient, quickly diagnosing and treating a medical problem. No one sees the eight or more years of schooling and the four or more years of residency: the extended sleepless marathons of common colds and domestic abuse cases; the wretched consequences of mistakes; the soul-battering humiliation and genuine fear of not being an immediate expert. Everyone thinks they know what it is because they read it on the internet or their second cousin's nephew's girlfriend is a nurse and she said ...

Not to compare writng to medicine, but why not? It requires the skill of a surgeon, the language application of a linguist, the most passionate open-heart imaginable, and the full-body armor of a knight: not to mention the total exposure of your very soul to the whole world. To all my writer friends out there: may the blood of passion eclipse your doubts and reap your best harvest as you grow and grow and GROW.