It isn’t really called a purple moon. It’s a Super Blood Blue Moon. An event that hasn’t happened since sometime in the 1800’s and won’t happen again until sometime in the 2030’s. I read the exact dates in the newspaper but don’t recall them now.
It’s a super moon because the moon is as close to the earth as it ever is. It’s a blood moon because it’s a lunar eclipse that gives the moon a red tint. It’s a blue moon because it’s the second full moon in the month. A red blue moon seems like it should be a purple moon to me.
What I opened my laptop to write about this morning wasn’t what they call this thing. It was about the sense of wonder I felt this morning.
I set the alarm for 5:30 which is a bit earlier than normal for me these days. I started the coffee and then went outside. There was still just a sliver of the moon at full brightness and the rest was already in the shadow of the earth.
Perfect timing because I wasn’t really interested in standing out in the cold for too long to watch the entire slow show of the earth’s shadow creeping over the moon. I was up just in time for those last few exciting minutes.
It was a cool thing to see: the moon hanging there in the sky, still visible, but not glowing like normal. It looked like space. Like outer space. Like a giant ball of reddish rock just floating around out there.
I was filled with a sense of awe and appreciation that went far beyond just the coolness of watching this super purple moon. I felt this reminder of just how weird and cool and amazing the world is and how vast the universe beyond our world is. I had that deep sense that life is just so precious.
It’s the sort of feeling that I would love to be able to just hold on to. It seems strange that it’s even possible to forget for a second how special life is, much less for days or weeks or months as happens all to often to most of us. I do forget. I get caught up in the everyday of life and I forget the extraordinary of the every day.
It seems almost as though this sense of wonder is something that one should try to cultivate. I think part of what is so powerful about it is that it’s not something that one can really cultivate or predict. It just strikes at certain times. It’s a precious feeling. The fact that we’re all here and alive is really fucking cool.