Week 215 – Moonward

Tonight is the night of the Blood Moon, and despite Nasa saying there’s nothing to worry about, it has caused some consternation…

Which takes me to this rather fabulous image:

Credit: NASA, ESA, and J. Garvin (NASA/GSFC)

This picture is from Hubblesite and is the landing site of Apollo 17, back in 1972.

It also looks, quite literally, like a man in the moon.  He has a severe forehead, with a distinctive browbone.  There is an open eye looking at me from a sunken, shadowy socket.  A nose, broken, with a high bridge.  A mouth frozen at the point of saying something.

I don’t believe in apocalyptic prophecies, as such: I don’t deny the possibility that one may one day be proved true, but I don’t change my life to account for them and I don’t stock up on canned goods and bottles of water just in case.

But sometimes, I look up and I see a face in the moon. And I understand how so many cultures could have seen that, and believed there was someone up there.

So I appreciate why people see portents in the strange and unusual.  Personally  I see these things as quirks of nature that we interpret in our own strange and unusual ways, but people historically invested these quirks with a great deal more meaning, simply so they could be understood.

And that suggests not only that humans have striven to understand the world for a very, very long time – but also that we’ve been a creative and imaginative species for all that time too.

So rather than worry about what the Blood Moon will bring, I’m going to enjoy the fact that tonight the man in the moon will be looking out on a whole load of upturned faces.  Who knows what stories he will imagine of us…

Happy writing,

EJ

🙂