I missed it. I didn't even attempt to see it. I hate staying up that late. I didn't even sit in bed and look at the live feed on my laptop. I just let it pass. Maybe I'll be around in 600 years when it happens again. I am referencing, of course, the total lunar eclipse, which coincided with the onset of the winter solstice that happened last night, despite the fact I wasn't a party to seeing it.
We had clouds, so there wasn't a snowball's chance we were going to see it anyhow, so I really didn't feel compelled to watch it online or on T.V. since the magic is more than slightly dimmed by not seeing it for real. If I could have seen it happening, against a dark clear sky I may have brewed a cup of coffee and toughed it out, but under the circumstances, nah.
The last time I stayed up to watch a phenomenon was when we were on our cruise in the Mediterranean. The captain announced we would be passing through the Strait of Messina at around 3:00am local time. I thought, I'd like to see that. Sicily and Italy in one scene, dark and mysterious. We were with another couple and my male counterpart decided he, too would like to see the "Old Country", which truly was his family's old country.
Over a bottle of wine, inside the large warm dining room it seemed like such a wonderful, adventurous idea. It was so perfect as a matter of fact that we could hardly now imagine not doing it. We celebrated our intrepid spirit by toasting to some cocktails in the stern of the ship. We noticed it was just a little rough. When we walked the companionway past the storm doors, we noticed a little whistle like you might hear when a breeze catches a piece of siding on your house and makes a little noise.
Many more cocktails and hours later, it was rough for real. We decided to stumble to bed, set our alarms and meet on the thwart deck to witness the majesty of the moment of passing through the Stait of Messina.
At 2:30, I was still awake, having great difficulty keeping the contents of my stomach from gushing forth as the ship was heaving and lurching. We were in a lower deck room and out our large porthole, we could see the sea, roiling and large waves cresting against the side of our vessel spraying way up past the top of our window. It was, disconcerting.
I passed a coffee stand on the way up and availed myself of a cup. I walked to the storm doors and not seeing my companion, decided to step outside to see if he was there. I stepped to the storm doors and the moment they parted, the lid and all the coffee in my cup was immediately sucked out of cup and disappeared somewhere to stern.
Oh... I see it's a little windy. No sweat, I thought as I plugged my nose and blew to make sure my ear drums hadn't ruptured upon the extreme decompression I just suffered.
And cold. And wet. And miserable. John, my counterpart came out a short time later and immediately his hat was summarily removed in a similarly rude fashion as my coffee. He managed to catch it, though, and we exchanged groggy drunken salutations lost to the wind. We looked ahead when we could until the salt wind dried our eyes and we needed to look away. And we could see?
Nothing. Some lights on each side, some buoys, otherwise not a GD thing.
There we were, Frick and Frack, looking like Gilligan and the Skipper in the opening credits of Gilligan's Island, holding ourselves fast against the raging sea, with John's one hand plastered to his hat. And we stood there, in silence and waited the full hour or more until we got through the Strait and just as silently went back to our own staterooms and slept a little more before the morning.
As an epilogue, had we read the cruise log ahead of time, we would have noted that upon our return from the Adriatic to the Mediterranean we would pass the straights at a reasonable hour, in full light which would allow us the ability to actually see something. From the bar. Which is the way God intended it.
But, I have the story. For a guy like me, the story is worth the suffering as I can get miles out of a story featuring suffering as a main character. I won't be able to regale people about freezing off my attachments at 3 am looking at the lunar eclipse, but I sure did sleep well. This one was the one that got away. I'm okay with that.
No comments:
Post a Comment