Coordinates: Lunar Eclipse

I have been anxious about the moon all day.

Lunar eclipses are traditionally harbingers of some kind, great signals in the sky warning of the wrath of the gods or the terrifying impermanence of the things we hold constant. My anxiety about watching the eclipse in the best possible way had expanded to the point where watching the supposed harbinger was actually its own calamity: tilt your head skyward, get to high ground. This translated into two near misses on Mount Auburn as I ran towards the Crimson staring awkwardly up and over my shoulder at the sky. Mildly panicked, I noted that there was already a growing bite out of the moon—who knew how long the rest of it would last?

On the rooftop, we made the most of this strange, underwhelming light show. We exhausted our feeble moon-themed playlist after five songs, two of which were “Dancing in the Moonlight.” We compared myriad earnest texts from concerned Dads, who seemed contractually obligated to urge us to “Go outside!!!!!!” and asked us, “Does your brother know about the eclipse??” My own father texted from our rooftop in California, where the sunlight would not fade for several more hours. “Have you found it yet? It’s foggy here.” It was also 7 o’clock in the evening.

We had secured each other’s company at the cost of the corona of light pollution coming off the Square. The moon was hazy and indistinct, haloed by lights from Adams and Insomnia, but at least we had someone to complain about it with. Snapchats revealed only a disappointing smudge of light at best and our own squinting, upturned faces accidentally captured in selfie-mode at worst. There was a lot of disagreement on many points. This wouldn’t happen again for eight, 18, 80 years. It would be best in 20 minutes, no, an hour. It was bigger in Maine.

Tonight’s eclipse was particularly exciting because it stood at the intersection of two other moon-tacular occurrences : It was a supermoon, meaning the moon would appear larger than normal, and also a blood moon, meaning that for a time it would turn an improbable shade of autumnal red-orange. This combined with the fact that it would disappear for a while collectively created a picture of the evening in my head that was significantly more exciting than the two hours I spent staring at the moon more or less doing its normal thing.

At a certain point, we ran out of things to say. The moon grew slowly more orange and, to me, slowly less real. I tried to decide what it looked like: I could make it both positive and negative space, a copper coin or a hole punched in the sky, a weird piece of fruit or a tunnel leading Somewhere Else. It looked like the backdrop for a high school play. It looked like a pin pressed into a map of the sky. It looked like it could fall. It looked like the oranges my dad used to pull out of the fridge and mark up with sharpie pens and tooth picks, trying to explain to my sister and me: This is where the equator is, these are poles. Is it dark in California yet?

At my previous blood moon, the summer after senior year, a confluence of omen-like occurrences had led me to believe that there was something in the mysticism of the eclipse, after all. A small warty toad had hopped directly into my hands as the eclipse faded in the sky; the next day, an honest-to-god raven clutching an honest-to-god live snake twisting in its beak had landed directly in front of me. I know this sounds fake. But the moon disappearing and then turning orange for an hour sounds fake, too. My expectations for this blood moon were high. What Harvard-themed omens might befall me this eclipse? All I had seen so far was a despondent-looking rabbit outside Mather house.

Eventually, the inherent boringness which I admit is a big part of any eclipse got the better of most of the roof party, and it was just me outside, California-cold in the fall night. I stared up at the moon, still burnt orange, definitely still there, waiting for Meaning or primordial fear or the thrill of any emotion at all. I wanted desperately to be able to ascribe some portent to this mystery in the sky, as the ancients did. Was there a way to make this about final clubs?

Instead, I felt only a vague sense of anticlimax and my usual irrational vertigo caused by looking at stars. As the moon shifted back to its usual pale silver, I couldn’t help hoping that the next time brings something more.