{"id":3360,"date":"2013-11-03T09:29:19","date_gmt":"2013-11-03T14:29:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/?p=3360"},"modified":"2013-11-03T09:29:19","modified_gmt":"2013-11-03T14:29:19","slug":"inspired-by-an-unseen-eclipse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/?p=3360","title":{"rendered":"Inspired by an Unseen Eclipse"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s almost sunrise. I force myself to leave my warm bed on this Sunday when a lie-in is possible. Glancing out the window, the clouds in the East are discouraging but the\u00a0grays of the dawn sky are taking on a yellow glow and there are hopeful breaks of blues. Hidden behind those clouds, the Sun is about to be eclipsed by the Moon and I’d like to see it.<\/p>\n

\"2013-11-03<\/a><\/p>\n

There’s not an open view to the East from my house so I think about driving to the beach but instead, I just walk around the neighborhood searching the sky. Shuffling through the leaves in my driveway, I pull my hood up against the damp chill. To my right, the hedge twitters and beeps with Chickadees and Nuthatch and a squirrel scrabbles up the Oak tree. The neighbors are quiet – no leaf blowers, no cars warming up. In the distance, I hear the hum of the highway traffic and sweetly, a church bell tolls from across the river.<\/p>\n

As I turn the corner, a drizzle fogs my glasses and the clouds have turned back to dull grey, closing off sky-views behind a dense wall. There will be no views of this morning’s rare solar eclipse, no glimpse here of the Sun with a Moon shadow. Not in my neighborhood. I turn back to the warmth of my house.<\/p>\n

\"2013-11-03<\/a><\/p>\n

I like to see these unusual celestial events, to gaze up at the sky and think about spinning through space in a universe so much bigger than ourselves. I like these visual triggers to ponder the mystery of existence, to climb out from under the mundane crap cluttering my mind: my desk at work piled with paper, the bills that need paying, the house and yard that needs cleaning. Oh, there are infinite ways I get lost in minutia every day, the lists and worries. But this morning, these things shrink away. My thoughts are in a bigger place: the miraculousness of Earth spinning around the Sun.<\/p>\n

I remember that right now, in time and space, my friends in Japan are in their night even as I watch this day’s beginning. With pleasure I think about a dear friend in Tasmania celebrating the warmth of Spring as I ready, reluctantly, for winter. Everywhere around this earth, humans – asleep or awake – experiencing joy, sorrow, birth, death, so fast and endlessly moving yet present, now. Incredible.<\/p>\n

I need these reminders of the vastness of the Universe so that my paper-strewn desk, the leaves on the lawn recede, at least for a time, to the appropriate corner of my being. Even as I missed the personal visual, I feel the joy of an expanded consciousness created even by imagining the shadow cast by the Moon over the Sun, behind a bank of clouds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s almost sunrise. I force myself to leave my warm bed on this Sunday when a lie-in is possible. Glancing out the window, the clouds in the East are discouraging but the\u00a0grays of the dawn sky are taking on a yellow glow and there are hopeful breaks of blues. Hidden behind those clouds, the Sun … Continue reading Inspired by an Unseen Eclipse<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9],"tags":[39,170,167,15,20,22,38,46,43,37,12,31,171,65,168,19,169],"class_list":["post-3360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-seasonal-musings","tag-birds","tag-consciousness","tag-eclipse","tag-garden","tag-grief","tag-japan","tag-light","tag-meditation","tag-moon","tag-morning","tag-nature","tag-neighborhood","tag-sky","tag-spring","tag-sun","tag-time","tag-universe"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pPzTS-Sc","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3360"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3360\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3366,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3360\/revisions\/3366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}