Moonrise moonrise

This past weekend, after a really tiring move from one apartment to another, Phaedrus, Piyali and I drove down to Wilmington, a beach town in North Carolina.

After circling the city in smaller and smaller spirals, we finally reached our hotel at 8.00 pm at night. Too later to do anything or go anywhere, other than a pub, which is no good because, hold your breath, I do not drink, and the smoky interiors really gets to my head and brings out all my violent instincts...not something you want to risk on a vacation intended to be peaceful.

So we chose to drive down to the beach anyway. It is wonderful, this thing called the ocean. Keeps pounding away relentlessly and deafeningly, and miraculously still sounds soothing. It was quite dark by the time we reached. The only light was from the pier next to us. Just enough to light up the waves lapping the shore. But in the distance one could still see the horizon. Two different shades of very inky blue. And while we just kept staring into nothing, we saw an orange blob that looked like a buoy. But it wasn't bouncing up and down, it just kept coming up. It took a while for it to trigger in our heads that it was Mr. Moon putting up a nice show.

I know that the moon looks big when it is close to the horizon, but this was Huge. A mottled bright rust colored moon that seems to be painted. Except that paintings do not move, exude a soft glow, and dance in a shimmery reflection off the surface of a choppy sea. We tried hard to capture it on our digital camera, our rudimentary skills with it not really helping the situation. But we finally gave up on wrestling with technology, sat on the white-gray sand, and enjoyed nature's sound and light show.