Tag: moon

Wolf Moon

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I’d like to take you all on a little Santa Fe vacation today. Come sit on my porch. It’s a bit chilly, but we have a heater. Here, you can sit next to it.


Sit with me and watch the full Wolf Moon rise.


I made sure to check the time and paid attention to where the moon rose the night before. Still, at first I wondered if I had it right. Then the sky began to lighten with that silver blue light that can be only moon.

Finally a sliver of moon peeked above the hillside.

This part seems to happen so much more quickly. Even though I know in my head that we are turning faster than it’s moving, it still seems like the moon hurries.

Full of light, it brightens the hills.

And the clouds above.

Nearly free of the hills.

And here is where I didn’t do so well. Hopefully you’re not feeling moonrisus interruptus. See how the focus is already blurring? The moon was so very bright, it took over the lens. All subsequent photographs look like a big white circle in a field of black.

Too bad, because my eyes could see so much more – the subtle shadows of the face of the moon.

I’ll get better at this, I swear.

Why I like writing? If, in the morning, the ending looks unfocused – I can always fix it.

Long Night Moon

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Last night was the solstice moon, the Long Night Moon. And you also likely knew, unless you live under a rock, that there was a full lunar eclipse also.

No, I didn’t get any photos of the eclipse. We had a fair amount of cloud cover last night. I got up at 12:45 to see, but to no avail. It’s funny here – the clouds will lay low and flat over the top of us, but the horizons will be more or less clear.

So I caught the moon here, rising full on the longest night of the year.

And here she is again, over fourteen hours later, after a long, leisurely stroll across the sky and through the earth’s shadow, to set into the pink of sunrise.

The long night is over. Now we turn our eyes to the east, and the first day in our steps towards summer again.

Looks pretty glorious to me.

Frosty Moon

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Crazy Gym Lady (as I walk in the door): “Let’s see, she’s got on her red coat and teal headband – she’s all ready for Christmas!”

Me: “Um, but it has nothing to do with Christmas.”

Crazy Gym Lady: “Well, I’m very visual.”

~

This moon is from Saturday evening. I would have liked to catch it last night, but I foolishly scheduled an FFP board meeting at the same time as moonrise. But, since the moon was technically fully full at 10:27am Sunday morning, the night before is pretty much the same as the night after.

November’s moon is the Frosty Moon. It’s also called the Full Beaver Moon. I am not Tawna Fenske, however, so I decided to stay away from that one.

Saturday wasn’t frosty at all. In fact, it was fully and gorgeously warm. Doesn’t that picture look like a summer sky? We went hiking and sat on the patio for cocktails. But, as if ushered in by the Frosty Moon, cold weather hit last night. The wind roared in, freezing rain pelted the windows. Between the bright, full moon and the turbulent storm, we and the animals woke several times during the night. This morning shows a dusting of our first snow.

Seems appropriate for Thanksgiving week to me.

Which, um, has nothing to do with Christmas.

Hunters Moon

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Our weather has finally turned. Gone are the hot, dry baking days.

The last week has been cool. All night long the rain pounds on our flat roof, a soothing sound that makes me want to tuck deeper into the warm covers.

I thought I might not catch the rising Hunters Moon, but then it crested the cloud banks over Tonto National Forest, in all its radiant glory.

We lead fortunate lives, that we don’t worry about hunting for the winter. We may fret about paying the credit card bill or defaulting on the mortgage, but we aren’t watching the descending long nights with trepidation, wondering if we’ve put enough food by to last all the way though deep winter and spring blizzards. We don’t look at our children and wonder which won’t be around for the next summer.

Perhaps worry is worry and the subject doesn’t matter.

It’s human nature, I suppose, to take the blessings for granted and focus on what we don’t have. We angst about what people might think of us, whether we can win the lottery and get that million dollars, if that agent will request a full manuscript. It’s not that these concerns aren’t important. If they weren’t meaningful to us, they wouldn’t occupy our attention.

But we’re not counting on the full moon to give us a little more light to hunt by either. Instead, it’s just a beautiful orb, illuminating the night.

Corn Moon

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I know a lot of people are calling this the Super Harvest Moon, but it’s traditionally the Corn Moon in September.

This full moon coincided with the autumn equinox, with the moon rising as the sun set – thus the “super” part. I’m not sure who coined that term. It smacks a bit of “super-size-me,” and I kind of doubt the Native Americans of North America, who coined the full-moon names had the concept of “super,” but I could be wrong.

“Ho, Little Elk, did the Great Spirit reward your hunting?”

“Yes, Red Eagle, the Great Spirit sent me a Super-buck deer. We shall eat well tonight.”

See what I mean?

At any rate, this photo of the corn moon is not from last night, but from the night before. We were reliably forecast for rain to come in yesterday, to the tune of 80%. The forecasting types could apparently see this one coming from a long ways off – a long chain of heavy-bellied clouds working like a conveyor belt to bring gulf moisture up to us.

So I took the photo the night before, just in case. Which was a good thing because we had pouring rain all afternoon and night. We never saw the sun, much less the set and the moonrise.

Which was perfectly fine because we hadn’t had any moisture for weeks and weeks. Everything had become dusty, cracking dry.

The calendar shows the full moon on one day, but really it’s full for about three days. Depending on how far off of full, you might see it slightly gibbous, with a slight shaving off of one side. It’s not always easy to pinpoint, that exact moment of perfect fullness, when the waxing stops and the waning starts. We’re back to my pendulum now.

I take comfort in that concept, that nothing in nature is ever a fixed point. Instead, our universe is a dynamic system, in constant change.

What appears to be still is simply a snapshot.

Red Moon and Good Dreams

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Full moon rising over the harbor at Newport.

Because it was in August, it was the Red Moon. Aptly named. I’d had an idea that I’d try to blog all the full moons for the next year, but then I went and missed the first one due to vacation lassitude. I’ll make it up with the September moon.

You’ll see.

I had the best dream last night. One of those dreams that are so lovely, I’m still riding on the happy wave of it.

And, oh yeah, it was total wish-fulfillment.

I dreamed the agent that I mailed my first 100 pages to the other day called me and said she wanted to visit me to talk about my book. She came to my house and I had to pull the book from the library that had her critique notes in it. She told me they were in the Ignatius volume.

(Um, no, I have no idea what any of that means. It was a dream, okay?)

She pronounced it Ignashus and I thought maybe it should be Ignateeus, since it was Latin, but I didn’t say anything. She had me also read my synopsis to her, which I’d written on lettuce leaves. (Doesn’t everyone?) That one, I think could be related to the fact that she tweets about lunch a fair amount.

At any rate, it was wonderful, validating and everything I hope will happen. I knew that my book would be published and published well. I woke up feeling happy about it.

I’m still happy.

Even though I only mailed it on Tuesday, so I know it’s all wishing, even if it comes from the heart.

Still, Snow White is dancing around and singing, cartoon bluebirds flitting about.

Lovely day.

En Route

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We left Santa Fe this morning at 4 am, the full moon dropping to the horizon as we made our way to Albuquerque.

I spend a lot of time in airports. But this is vacation, so I tried to set up this trip so we weren’t exhausting ourselves just to get there.

It ended up feeling like leisurely hopping, from Albuquerque to Dallas/Fort Worth, to Miami to San Juan. This is a really neat sculpture on the E Concourse at DFW. It makes music while you walk through it.

It feels like found art, except that someone put it there on purpose. It’s an unexpected delight, nonetheless.

We’re spending the night in San Juan. Tomorrow morning we’ll hang by the pool. I’ll get a little writing done. Then we’ll fly to Tortola and take a ferry to Virgin Gorda. I like this wending. With every stop, the weather has warmed and moistened. With each stage, the pace slows and we ratchet down to match.

(For my work cronies – we’re staying at that same Isla Verde Embassy Suites. And the access road is still torn up in exactly the same way. It’s as if time hasn’t passed.)

This evening we had dinner and drinks on the beach. And I got to meet up with Melissa Arroyo, FFP’s conference coordinator this year. She and I had only met online before this, so we had fun talking in person. She’s a real dynamo. Now when we meet at the September conference in New Orleans, we’ll recognize each other.

And son of a gun, this evening? There was that full moon again, rising up through the palm trees, seeing us on our way.

Luscious Luddites

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If the Harvest Moon rises like a big pumpkin, then the Worm Moon sets like a peach. The April moon is the Pink Moon. We’ll have to see if it’s any pinker than this.

I wasn’t on the internet much over the weekend. Not really on purpose. On Saturday I did my writing and booked out fairly early for a day of power-shopping for patio furniture with a friend, along with lunch at the Guadalupe Cafe. It involved a lot of back-and-forthing and comparisoning. By the time I got home, with an enormous box of pool lounger wedged into the back of the convertible, I was tired. We did cocktails and movie-watching.

Never did turn on the laptop again.

Then Sunday was for grocery-shopping and the purchase of the rest of the patio furniture that I hadn’t wanted to go back and buy on Saturday, because it would have meant leaving the aforementioned enormous box in my convertible in the parking lot. Then there was yet another trip back and forth, attempting to wedge more enormous boxes into too-small vehicles.

After that I spent the afternoon assembling patio furniture, hanging outdoor art and cleaning up the yard. It felt good to be outside in the sun. I learned how to drill through stucco. I did not do anything on my electronic To-Do list.

And it was good.

Someone mentioned on Twitter the other day that people had noted conversations were slow these days. Being my flip self, I asked if she meant the people or the medium. She said both. Then offered that perhaps, with the warming weather, people were spending more time outside.

That’s okay, I think. It’s good to walk away from the internet and spend some time in the sun.

I’ve received a lot of interesting feedback on Saturday’s post about Kindle vs. iPad. The comments on the post give good insight to the mind of the reader. On Twitter, one techie blogger said that I might be the first person to fault the iPad for allowing me to multitask, but also called my post an “intelligent article.” So I didn’t say that I can hardly be the first to think so, I just might be one of the first to publicly complain about it.

I was surprised though, how many people contacted me to say they agreed – that for them reading is the last refuge from multi-input activities. It’s a time to settle and concentrate on one thing.

It should be noted these are all readers. People who love to read and want to enjoy it.

RoseMarie sent me this really interesting study that she thought would shed some light on the real market for the iPad. She’s right: they want the universities. The study tested out what would become the Kindle DX in several college classes. This is an interesting finding:

During the time of the study, the retail price of the Kindle DX was $489. Other eReader pricing varied from $199 to $859.13 When students were asked if they would purchase a Kindle DX (or other dedicated eReader) for academic use, they indicated that the price would need to drop dramatically –– to less than $100 –– in order for them to seriously consider purchasing one. However, many students suggested that they would be willing to spend considerably more for a multi-function device, such as a tablet or netbook, if it eliminated the need to own a laptop (and if it were as comfortable as an eReader for prolonged reading).

Multi-function device, eh? And a very juicy market.

A couple of other things to note from the study are that students found they concentrated better with an eReader that removed the temptation to check email or surf the web and that some of the students noted that they didn’t experience eyestrain reading on the computer. That’s notable to me because Kev has argued with me that it’s a generational thing, that the younger people don’t mind reading on the computer. I think eye strain is eye strain and they’re just still too young to really feel the impact. But we shall see.

What’s becoming clear to me is that the recreational reader isn’t really on the marketing radar here.

I don’t want to become yet another person proclaiming the death of publishing, but I think this approaches the core of the issues with books and readers. The people who sell stuff, the black-magic marketers, want to simplify books into a commodity. That’s their job. Sell the product they want to sell for the price they want. But books don’t fall neatly into the commodity-niche. They are essentially immaterial – a story, a feeling, a time in a different head or a different world.

Reading is, in the end, solitary and intimate.

Maybe I’m naive, but I’m not sure I believe you can sell that.

Patience Panties

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A gal I talk to on Twitter, @Uppington, recently finished reading Pat Conroy’s The Prince of Tides, which remains one of my all-time favorite novels. There’s this exquisite moment when the mother shows the children the sun setting at the exact moment the moon rises. Conroy is a master of character and setting. He weaves both together to create in the reader the magic of that moment.

I don’t know if Conroy suggested it to me, but I always feel the magic of that moment. Here it’s the moon setting into the valley, an ocean of fog, the quiet blues and blacks of night giving way to glimmering pinks. I turn around, and there is the sunrise, blazing into the fire of day.


Those moments between are unbearably full.

I’m waiting between things right now. Writers are often cautioned to be patient. (I’ve mentioned before, this is not my forte.) The romance writers often put this in terms of “putting on your patience panties.” I don’t know if this is because the overwhelming majority of romance writers are women and identify with the lessons of girlhood or because they’re accustomed to the language of motherhood. Writers who become upset about bad contest scores or book reviews are often advised to put on their “big girl panties” and suck it up. I suppose men will tell each other to “cowboy up” or some such. It’s the same thing.

So, what’s happened is, an epublisher offered to buy this little erotic novella I wrote. They have a good reputation, so that will be fine. Another epublisher with a slightly better rep also has it, so I inquired with them if they were close to a decision or if I should just withdraw the novella and go with the other publisher. I got a very strange, misspelled, answer back that basically said I’d hear when I heard. The first epublisher is looking better and better all the time.

Meanwhile, this agent has my full manuscript. She requested it from a query I sent, so I’ve been somewhat more hopeful on this one. The other agents who’ve requested my full MSS are ones who met me at conferences. When agents or editors meet you in person, I think they’re somewhat more inclined to ask for the full MSS, because they know you and want to give you the best opportunity they can. One of those agents also has Obsidian: The Revision. She’d passed on the original version, but agreed to read the revision. I haven’t heard from her, so I’m not holding out much hope there.

But the agent reading from the query… Well, let’s just say I’ve been to this prom before and came home without an engagement ring.

At any rate, I emailed her to ask if she cared if I entered a deal on the epubbing of the novella. I expected her to say no, but she answered and said she’d read the full right away and we could discuss then.

So, I’m waiting. Knowing she’s reading it. Making a decision. Totally out of my control. I’m afraid to check my email, since that will likely be a “no.” I’m carrying my cell phone out to the mailbox with me, in case she calls with a “yes.”

I’m thirteen again.

At the same time, I know this day will end with the sun setting and the moon rising to replace it. Fire will give way to black and tomorrow morning it will all repeat.

And I have my own washer and dryer, so I can wash my patience panties as often as necessary.

Moonset at Sunrise

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The moon has been so bright the last few nights that it shines in our west-facing bedroom like a spotlight.

Every night, the moon rises one hour later. So the time the moon shines in our window has gotten progressively later. The last few nights, we’ve awakened when the moon hit the window at just after midnight, then 1:30 and so on. Last night I woke up at 3:45 and got up to pee, which is fairly usual for me. When I came back to bed, David was sitting on the side of the bed, which is very unusual. He gave me a bright-eyed look and said “time to get up?”

Um no, I told him. I realized the room was so bright from the moon it could look like sunrise. It’s not even four o’clock yet.

Oh good, he says, lays down and promptly goes back to sleep. If he was ever really awake at all.

I was awake for a while, watching the mooon shine in. I inherited the family gene for fretting in the middle of the night. Fortunately I don’t do it often, or for very long.

Having the moon there comforted me.

When we got up to the alarm call at six, the moon still hung there, just setting as the sun rose.

Soon it was gone and the day belonged entirely to the sun.