Oregon's Partial Solar Eclipse

Today I managed to site today’s total solar eclipse.  Oregon was outside the path of totality, and Eugene only got about 23.5% sun coverage.  I thought this eclipse would be a little like last year’s, which was not very visible through the clouds, but the morning was relatively sunny before the eclipse, so I readied my colander, camera, and tripod with high (or at least higher) hopes.

I set up my portable work desk on the back deck and set things up.  I put a solar filter over the lens of my camera.  Back in the summer when I bought it, I had a notion that I’d fly east to be in the path of totality.  But by the time I got my act together in mid-January and sat down to actually purchase a ticket, they were prohibitively expensive.  The filter allows me to get a close-up of the sun’s disk, complete with sunspots. 

When the eclipse started, there was a light haze.  As the eclipse progressed over the next hour or so, the clouds became thicker.  This presented a bit of a challenge, as I had to keep adjusting the exposure time to compensate for changes in the sun’s luminosity.  When the cloud cover thickened,  I used a longer exposure time; when I used a longer exposure time, the camera was more likely to pick up the scattered light from the clouds.  Also, I’m also thinking the filter messed up the sharpness of focus—although I sometimes have difficulty dialing in sharpness of the moon’s features when I’ve extended the lens barrel out all the way.

Between shots I took a look at the sun through some eclipse glasses.  I also tried to get a good image of the eclipse through the holes of a colander; I think it would have worked better with more of the sun covered by the moon and less covered by the haze and clouds.  

This eclipse was fun, and I remember the eclipse of Friday, August 5, 2017.   That eclipse was a party with eggs, bacon, and mimosas.  This eclipse was juggled between a kind of early lunch, and various Day Jobbe tasks.   The previous eclipse was a family event; this year it was just me (Mark went into work), the dog, and the cats (Aoife did lunge into the camera tripod near the end to harass squirrels).   The effects of the eclipse were muted by the clouds, and we weren’t in the path of totality, so there were no amber alerts, shadow bands, or roosting birds.

Shortly after maximum coverage, the clouds thickened and hid most of the rest of the eclipse. I did get a few shots in at the end when the sky cleared some.  Of course, as soon as the eclipse was complete, the clouds cleared up and the sky was a deep, clear blue.

Still, it was better than last year’s annular eclipse.  

I wound up taking about 200 photos. It’s safe to say that not all 200 were stunning eclipse shots, but they do show the process.  I chose about sixteen that seemed the best (or at least the most interesting).

May 2022 Lunar Eclipse

Yesterday was an eclipse full moon.  The sky was partly cloudy, and there were some sprinkles, but it was clear enough that I set up the backyard circle for a solitary ritual (with patchouli incense!) and did a tarot card reading for myself.  This particular eclipse was supposed to be especially good for divination (and sex magic!).  

I laughed when the first card I pulled, representing my general state, was the Moon.  I grunted when the second card, representing obstacles, was The High Priestess reversed.   The following seven cards were mostly swords and pentacles, and I'm still trying to figure out what they mean as a whole -- but it's along the lines of challenge your unconscious assumptions to make sure they jive with reality and then actually do something.  I think--this reading was one of the more disjointed ones.  I probably should have done a Celtic Cross spread instead of the past-present-future spread that I used, or reframed my question as a yes-or-no question instead of a what-should-I question.

After the ritual, I grabbed my camera and went up the hill to see the eclipse.  There was a bank of clouds on the horizon, so the actual 8:29 moonrise was obscured.  The eclipse totality was to begin shortly.  

When I got to the reservoir, there were about a hundred people there.  I walked through crowds of milling people, cyclists, and shrieking children to the eastern end of the reservoir, to where folks with tripods, telescopes and cameras were.  I thought maybe I'd see some astronomy friends, J&C O, but they weren't there.  Neither was the moon.  

The sky was still light, and it seemed as if the eastern clouds and haze became more substantial.  After a while, folks perceived an orange glow in the grey overcast.   A hush fell on the crowd as people adjusted telescopes or peered through the vapors between trees.  Then someone started playing an electric guitar battle or something and the clouds thickened.  

Shortly after full totality, the clouds drew away from the moon enough to make it visible.  Everyone appreciated the orange color.  And then a limb of cloud would obscure the moon again.  Focusing the camera was difficult; the moon wouldn't be out long enough to confirm the focus, and between the clouds and dimness, the best strategy was to focus on a star (once it was dark enough for them to be visible) and then swing the camera back at the moon — assuming it was visible enough to find.  

I think I got about five passable photos of the moon out of about eighty.  

Eclipse and Writing

I managed to haul myself out of bed at 4:30-ish this morning in order to see the total lunar eclipse.  When I poked my head of of the door, the moon had a dark bite out of it, and small puffs of cloud skirted over it.  I spent the next quarter of an hour alternately gazing from our deck at the moon in various types and aspects of cover and resting on the couch until it looked like the eclipse was going to be visible through the clouds.  Then I woke up Mark.

The shadowed parts of the moon glowed a kind of rusty orange.  Sometimes it glowed; other times it was a dull brown.  A shrinking sliver of silver at the base made the moon look like a smouldering ember on a silver plate, or like an Egyptian Barque of the Moon.  Then the clouds would cover the moon, and all that could be seen of the moon was a half-closed eye.  

The sliver of light on the moon shifted as the moon traveled through the Earth's umbra, and just before totality, the cloud cover rolled over the show and no further view of the eclipse was possible.  So we went back to bed.

On the writing front...

I've given myself a deadline of May 1 to write a 90,000 word novel.  I suppose if I think of it as nine 10,000 word stories it might actually happen.  In order for this to work, I'm going to have to pound out 1500 words a day for the next three moons.  The new moon is right after Valentines day.  The next full moon is March 2.  The secod new moon is St. Patricks, and the second full moon is March 31.  The third new moon is Tax Day, and the 3rd is May 1, the Ides of Spring.  When I announced my intention to Mark, he was ... pragmatic.

Of course, yesterday's word count was a whopping 350.  But I finally ditched Jerick's larger hand-axes for smaller throwing hatchets.  I guess I'll have different members of the Order of the Axe use different types of axes.

Oh. I got a rejection for a short story yesterday.  Yay.

Eclipse

Sunday morning we traveled to my folk's house to be in place for the total eclipse of the sun which would take place the following Monday morning.  The Oregon Department of Transportation, the state police, and various news sites had been forecasting epoceclipse, with dire warnings that the event would turn into a combination Woodstock and hurricane Katrina.  Millions were expected to descend upon Oregon like a plague of locusts, eat all the food, buy all the gas, and start a zillion forest fires.

We opted to drive the day before the eclipse.  The traffic along 99W was fine, with the occasional, mandatory, slow farm truck.  We had a lovely day with my folks and my sister's family.  At 1:15PM  I laid down some painter's tape (aligned with the meridian sun)  on the deck to get a feel for the cardinal directions.  My folks' house is on a north-east by south-west axis, which has more to do with the slope it's on than with any solar alignment.  I double-checked it later that evening off of Polaris and it was close enough.

Monday morning, I woke up before sunrise and went out to see what could be seen.  There are a lot of forest fires going on around the state, and Sunday had become hazier and hazier as the day progressed.  Also, it's not unusual for the night to bring clouds in from the coast.  The sky was dark blue, which progressed to a kind of purple and to orange on the eastern horizon.  A bank of low haze hid the Cascade Mountains.  I took a few pictures of Venus.

When the sun rose, it was much more north than I'd expected.  I put down some more tape to mark where I thought the sun would be at 9 AM, set up a tripod and cameras, and made breakfast mimosas.  The family gathered for bacon and eggs and panckakes, and then it was time for first contact.

The local amber alert system sent various messages to everyone's cell phones warning people to 1) pay attention to the road, not the eclipse, while driving; 2) to watch for falling rocks while climbing during the eclipse, and; 3) to not look at the sun without proper eye protection.   In their driveway, the neighbors next door, laughed a lot, and we joked about throwing rocks at each other.  We also bet that the next amber alert would be about fireballs and the end times.

Through eclipse glasses, the sun's disk showed a little nibble out of it.  We tried various methods of projecting the crescent.  The binoculars produced the largest, most study-able image, while a colander produced the most artistic image.  I went back and forth on how much I liked looking through the eclipse glasses at the sun; at the beginning it was like looking at an eclipse of the moon, only more boring because the sun's disk is featureless and the moon has craters.  Also, I hadn't practiced, so I didn't figure out how to take a picture of the sun with the eclipse glasses over my camera: so those shots were odd reflections between the Mylar and the lens.

When the moon had the sun about half-way covered, the quality of the light was odd.  It was sunlight, but the intensity was down; in retrospect, I'd say it was like moonlight on a bright full moon night, except it was day.  At the start of the eclipse, the morning promised to be hot -- and I'd been sweating on my folks deck.  But now the sunlight shining on my arm didn't heat it at all.

We spotted two white objects.  At first we thought one of them might have been Venus, but they turned out to be weather balloons.   The kids were surprisingly nonplussed about the crescent sun, and roped Mark into a game of Monopoly.  We did get them out as totality approached.

It got darker and colder.

Mark saw the shadow bands first: squiggly waves running up the wall behind us.  Faster than a cloud's shadow, and more subtle, they broke the illusion that the house is a fixed object in space, and is actually a moving point on the celestial machine.  On some level, we knew we were seeing the portents of the swift and massive dance of the heavens.  The sundial motto, "Light is the Shadow of God" never felt more true at that moment.

Totality was upon us.  Things happened in quick succession.  The crescent sun became a fingernail, became a hairline, and winked out.   We whipped off our glasses.  I said, "Oh wow..."

A huge black disk hung in the middle of a white corona in a midnight blue sky.  I stood in a circle of quiet; distantly, I heard the kids jumping up and down and shouting that this was the coolest thing ever, neighbors whooping, and fireworks going off.   I snapped some photos.

"I think I see Mercury," I said, "at about eight o'clock."   The corona stretched away from the disk in asymmetric loops, like long silvered hair given life by static electricity.  There was a faint dot tangled in the corona, near the black disk--later I wondered if I was actually seeing Regulus.  I said, "Oh wow..." again.

I fiddled with the video camera's zoom.  Through the distance, I heard Mark and The Child making a quick video.  I looked up again at the blue, black and white spectacle.  A shadow of red tickled my eye.  I wasn't sure if it was really there.  Then a red pinprick appeared, like a small ruby set on a ring.  "Oh wow...  I'm seeing Bailey's Beads!" I said.   The ruby grew to a coal.  Brighter.  "Glasses on!" someone said.  Totality was over.

The moon's shadow raced away from the house, and the valley below brightened.  I looked for shadow bands, but they weren't visible.  The sky was still dark; it was still cold; and we all thought that was the shortest 90 seconds of our lives.

The sunlight grew stronger, but it wouldn't be another half hour or so before it would be able to warm my arms.  The sun's crescent swelled.  Already the memory of the corona faded to unreality -- something fantastic one might dream, something looming too huge and dominating to have been real.

I poured myself a second mimosa.

We gazed up at the growing sun, and tried to predict when the eclipse would end.  The disk looked like a hat's bill; it looked like Ms. PacMan.  It looked like a chipped plate.  It had a bird peck out of it.   Ten minutes past all of our predictions, it was an almost perfect circle.  The disk shone, climbing in the sky, with a rough patch along one point, as if the moon had abraded it.   It was perfect once more.

Sept 2015 Eclipse

Last night I went up to the Eugene Reservoir to watch the lunar eclipse.  I think half of Eugene was up there.  I met Jerry and Kathy Oltion, who are with the Eugene Astronomical Society, and hung out with them.  Allen Roberts showed up, as did Nina K Hoffman and Jacob Boyd.   I also saw some parents of The Child's school friends (Mark and The Child were not very interested in going with me, and stayed home.)

Folks milled around, waiting for the moon to rise.  The sun set shortly before 7, and everyone peered eastward to try to see if they could see the moon.  I brought my mobile device with the notion that I'd be able to photograph things through telescopes... but that didn't work out so well.  I did have an astronomy app that told me when the moon was above the (ideal) horizon.  There was a hill due east, and even though we were on College Hill, the moon was hidden.  Jerry pointed out that the moon would be difficult to spot, as the eclipse was well underway and the moon would be a tiny sliver (later this morning I saw a composite photo of the eclipse taken from Dallas, and it looked like two time zones over was the perfect place to watch the full moon rise and then promptly start to have bites taken out of it.  

Jerry, looking due east through binoculars, saw the moon first.  More haze than anyone had realized had built up and the moon was a dim orange wisp in the sky, barely perceptible in the blue twilight sky.  I went over and pointed it out to The Child's friends.   

The sky grew darker, and the moon rose, moving up and to the right at a forty-five degree angle, following the sun's near-equinoxal path.  It glowed an orange ember with the refracted light of the world's circle of sunrises and sunsets.  

Eventually, a sliver of white appeared on the moon's face.  I said bye to Jerry and Kathy and walked home.

Lunar Eclipse 4 April 2015

For once, the cat's antics were somewhat welcome, as he woke me up with enough time to gather some warm layers and my camera and tripod and go outside to watch the lunar eclipse.

I was slightly surprised that the sky had cleared, as it was rainy when I'd gone to sleep.  Low clouds hung in the east, and there might have been a wisp here and there, but the Big Dipper, Arcturus, Scorpio and Antares, and bunch of other stars and constellations were clear, as was the shrinking moon.

The moon was a tiny sliver when I stepped outside at about 4:45.  I managed to set the tripod up next to the house with a view of the moon and its reversed crescent, the horns pointing down instead of away from the horizon like a regular one.  The air was not too cold.  Dawn wouldn't be for another two hours or so.

The sliver grew less, and the argent glow never left the top.  An orange glow appeared at the bottom of the moon and faded as it moved up.  The moon was a copper orange mirror, with a silver ouroboros of light circumscribing it.  I found myself singing We Three's "Center of the Sun," along with the recording of Sarah Favret, Judy Johnson and Kim Scanlon singing in my head.  And then the whiter light along the moon's top really did look like a snake swallowing a thin line of a tail wrapped around the burning orange part.

I'd pause and take a picture -- carefully not looking at the camera screen so I wouldn't have a rectangular afterimage superimposed over the night sky.  Once again, I wished I had a telescope mount for my camera or my tablet.

I was looking down a funnel of all the sunrises and sunsets on Earth stretching their focus from the rim of the world and painting the moon citrine.  If this had been the early nineties, I'd be freezing with the Carleton Druids, gathered together for a ritual, celebrating the dance in the sky and tuning ourselves to the seasons.  I miss those rituals, when we'd all gather together under the sky (OK, or in someone's house).  In the pause, I thought about my writing and the cycles of the sun and moon, the Solar Eclipse sex scene from "The Mists of Avalon," and how thinking about my writing during a lunar eclipse felt like Londo Mollari wanting to meet the shade of a former emperor in the Babylon 5 episode "Day of the Dead."

The moon sank lower

And then the moon sank into the trees.  I tried moving around, but next to the house had been the best vantage point.  The moon was leaving eclipse totality, and the diamond bright white was driving the citrine away.  It was about 5:20 when I came inside.

I went through the pictures; I should have put the camera on manual and set the focus to infinity, because I would have gotten more shots -- the six good ones I stitched together into a mosaic.

Decade in Review: 2010

January 2010   I got a cortisol injection for my Ithiopathic Adhesive Encapsulitis, which finally fixed itself.  There's nothing like not being able to lift or bend to highlight how fragile a body is, how easily an accident can alter one's lifestyle.

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I spent a lot of time in Second Life, an on-line game where players create virtual versions of themselves, called avatars, and interact in a virtual world.  A friend from high school, Amy Beltane, had introduced me to "UUtopia," a collection of virtual land parcels owned (well, actually, leased) by Unitarians on Second Life.  At the time, Amy was attending seminary school, and her wife, Sharron, would meet in Second Life in their tricked-out treehouse.  (This was before Skype was common.)  When I first joined, UUtopia was bordered by Anarchists on one side, and Communists on the other.
I found Second Life interesting because players in it can design virtual objects; because I found the fuzzy boundary between the physical reality of people pushing buttons on a keyboard and the virtual reality of interacting with players' avatars fascinating on psychological, philosophical and theological levels; and because I could have interesting discussions with people.   OK, it was really fun to make things, and before two weeks had gone out, I was scripting programs to build things.

Once I'd been introduced, the UUtopians were incredibly nice to me and let me build stuff on their land.  I built Wiccan-flavored altars in Second Life that would chat the words of ritual in response or create a circle of blue flame in response to an accurately typed ritual phrase.  I built candles that would echo the intents of the candle lighter when virtually touched.  I made ritual labyrinths, glowing pentagrams, and hollow hills.  Sometimes I would help out and make a foundation or dome or something.

Most of the other folks I met were not builders.  They were programmers, grandmothers, students, poets, and many of them seemed to live on the east coast.  I think the most interesting was the person who frequently wore a fox body -- so yes, I've had religious discussions with a fox.   Occasionally, I would attend UU religious services in UUtopia (the UUtopians took leading services and giving sermons in turns); but since it was Mark's night out and I had to attend to The Child, this usually didn't work out.  I did manage to present one night, and that was well received.

Sadly, Amy and Sharron got divorced.  Which I leaned virtually.  Expressing my condolences to both of them was one of those times where the virtual and the real seemed both extra virtual and extra real.  Their parcel of land went up for sale.

Eventually, the UUtopians got tired of being collateral damage from the "Griefer War" going on between their neighbors.  ("Griefing" in Second Life is when players do things like cause it to rain giant penises, or create objects that duplicate wildly and use up all the hosting server's resource with junk objects, or otherwise crash the party and behave obnoxiously.)  They moved to a new island that was all UUtopia.   The move -- with its discussion of rent and sub-letting -- made me uncomfortably aware of how I was playing in a sandbox that other people were paying for.

However, the UUtopians (for the most part) seemed pleased to have me tinkering around and building things for them.  Probably the most involved build was a "bridge" (and café), which was like a museum of history display about the development of Neo-Paganism and its subsequent incorporation as a UU Sixth Source.  At one end was a large world map, about ten feet across.  I got some help and figured out a logarithmic scale so that fifty feet away from the map represented the year 2020, twenty-five feet away from the map represented the year zero CE, and fifteen feet away represented the compressed centuries of hominid development.  Then I placed various markers (the death of Hypatia of Alexandrea) and objects (Stonehenge) along the time-line and lined up where they would be located on the map.  

The objects had "hover text" over them labeling them.  Some even would dispense virtual cards with museum text on them.  What became evident to me was that there was a cluster of events around 1880 CE and 1980 CE, coinciding with the English mystery lodges in England (e.g. the Order of the Golden Dawn), and the introduction of Wicca and Goddess Worship in the United States.  To be sure, there were markers for events before the Common Era, but there was also a gap after about 300 CE were events thinned out.  But, to my mind at least, it showed how new Neo-Paganism (at least the Wicca-flavored part I'm most familiar with) is.  

As 2010 progressed, and after the Bridge was more-or-less done, I spent less and less time in Second Life.  The laptop I was using at the time was an older one, and I was at the trailing end of supported hardware for the game.  I really wanted to design things in it, and I'd told myself the typical maker's lie that I could make a living selling Second Life merchandise; but the reality was that it was a hobby, not a job, and I felt like a mooch creating virtual stuff on other people's virtual land.  Also, it was difficult not to spend less than an hour or two playing, and Second Life began to cut into my writing.  And it was something that was difficult to share with the family.

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Spring 2010   This was the year we had to get The Child into a school.   We had some friends who were Montessori teachers who were encouraging us to enroll in their school (four blocks away!), but getting in depended on the openings at the school, which were assigned by lottery.   The previous year, without the threat of enrollment hanging over our heads, Mark and I were able to look at the various schools calmly.  We decided most of the 4J schools were fine, and that the temperament and qualities of the individual teachers would have a bigger impact than a particular school.

I was really glad we'd practiced getting into a school.  The Eugene 4J school system has neighborhood schools, with the option for parents to move their kids to a non-neighborhood school if their kid gets a good number in the 4J lottery.  It's supposed to be equitable and flexible, but it engenders a heightened sense of an educational scarcity and encourages a cult-like following in the school a family eventually chooses.   I can't tell you how many frazzled parents I saw who were about to have a breakdown over the fear that they were somehow doing something wrong and about to mistakenly doom their child to a lifetime of consequences of Not Getting Into Yale.

The Child got good numbers, and we got into the Montessori system.   Over the summer there had been a fire at the Montessori school, with the result that the kindergarten was no longer at the facility four blocks away.   We wont discuss the Driving Habits of Other Parents (in SUVs).

I volunteered to help out with kindergarten P.E.  Wow; the coach was a miracle worker, and I took several pages of notes from him.


September 2010:  My story, "The View from the Top" got published on the Analog website:    It was part of an experiment the Wordos did.  We nailed down the main character, the setting, and the plot elements.  Then everyone went out and wrote stories; the idea was to see if we could isolate parts of a story.

After we'd critiqued them, Jerry Oltion sent a packet of the stories to Stanley Schmidt, explaining what we'd done.  Stanley chose Jerry's story for inclusion in the print version of the magazine, but was gracious enough to include the other stories he would have bought if he'd received them the standard way.  Although it would have been nice to have the story printed, it was an honor and a thrill to be published electronically at Analog.


November 2010:  I tried participating in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month).  That lasted about five days.  Despite just writing and "daring to be bad," NaNoWriMo requires about two weeks of preparation before hand if anything is going to come out of it -- and I'd have to agree with the mother who recently wrote, "Whoever planned this thing wasn't a parent with familial expectations about Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas."  One of these days I suppose I'll have NaNoWriMo in June/July.


December 2010:  Was pretty much all about the lunar eclipse, which happened on the Winter Solstice.  The holiday card was about the eclipse, I wrote haikus about the eclipse, and I concluded an early birthday celebration with a hike up the hill to see the eclipse.

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When I think about 2010, I'd have to say that this was the year of virtual hopes and fears.  So much of the focus was on the realm of ideas -- and what might or could happen.

Decade in Review: 2008

Feb 20, 2008.  A CUUPs ritual was planned for the full moon eclipse.  Although I voiced my suspicions, no one confirmed that the full moon would be visible from the church site.   Five minutes before the eclipse began, one other person appeared.  We looked for the moon, but it was below a near-by hill.  Ten minutes later, as I was leaving to go watch the eclipse with my family, a third person appeared and wondered why I was leaving.

Later, I hooked up with Mark and The Child at the Eugene Reservoir, where the Eugene Astronomy club had set up telescopes.  After my family left,  I watched the dark moon and harped for it and for the people milling around the telescopes.  Most folks appreciated the gesture for the gift it was, and I can't think of nicer (if laid back) public ritual.


June 2008.  Savoré closed completely.  The retail store closed and the web store as well.  Even after almost three years, we still hadn't found a replacement.


September 2008.  Suddenly, The Child was Ready for Preschool.  The clingy days were over.  Mark would come home from work and the two of us would be sitting on the couch, looking straight ahead and not making eye-contact, waiting for Mark to step through the door.

We asked around for preschool recommendations, and the next thing I knew, I was touring a preschool connected to a church.  Little "Gee, these folks are Extra Religious" alarm-bells were going off in my head, but I kept telling myself that some pretty cool parents had recommended the church.

Then I put down Mark as the other parent on a form.  The pre-school teacher started back-peddling and babbling, and the next thing I knew, I was in the principal's office with The Child.

"Well," he said.  "This has never happened before.  I think I'd have to speak to my bosses before we can let your child attend.  It's really in the best interests of The Child for him not to attend [because we will let all the kids in a preschool for four year olds know that men who have sex with other men are going to Hell and The Child's family is damned and we don't want him to have go through hating his Devil Dads and being shunned as a sinner by the other kids]."

Since I didn't want to have a Scene or Educational Moment with The Child sitting there wondering when we were going to have lunch, I said.  "You know, I think there's been some mistake, and I should be somewhere else."

So Much for Hippy Eugene.  On a happier note, we found the right school, in a church a few blocks away from The Wrong Church.  We had to wait a few more months to get in, because A Child's Educational Application Process must start three weeks after conception if you want to get into the Yale Track.

On a slightly related note, around now I got a phone call from a UUCE member who was working on a sex-education panel for the UUCE youth.  She needed someone on the panel who had multiple sex partners and wondered -- since I was a gay man -- if I knew any gay men who would be willing to sit in on the panel.   No, she didn't realize the implied assumption that all gay men are sleeping around; Yes, she was suitably horrified when I pointed out what she was asking.   All in a Day's Work as Mr. Gay Resources at UUCE.  Sigh... I'd sort of hoped there might be gay spiritual men at this liberal, welcoming church.


December 2008.  My short story, "Up" (this was before the movie of the same name) was accepted at the (then) Whidbey Student Choice Award (now the Penn Cove Literary Award)    This was a cheery Wordos Holiday Story, where a socially isolated protagonist has to deal with the aftermath of a fatal family car crash.   My worries that I might be unconsciously trying to kill my family off were eclipsed by the fact that this was my second (professional rate) sale.


In terms of writing, 2008 was tough -- I was getting stories out into the mail, and although I was getting rejections more quickly than I had before, no one was buying.  The Whidbey sale helped me not feel like a "wanna-be has-been."

Journal: Oct 23 Writing.

Enchanté.  This morning's writing session was not the best.  I did get out of bed at (I think) 5:15, but I must have gotten the wrong amount of sleep, becuase I wasn't very awake.  I think I was typing by 5:30, but I was in a "I'm trying to write, but nothing's happening," space, so I transcribed a dream instead.  I'm not sure why I would be singing the last lines of "Eleanor Rigby" with a grumpy-but-nice 1970's sit-com type of dad while we climbed the grass-tuffed dunes surrounding his coastal home, but at least I was flying.   And then external distractions happened.  600 words, probably 250 of which were actual useful short story ones.

Work-out:  Did about 130 calories on the rowing machine in 13 minutes.  I'm continuing attempts to use the free-weights and an articulated work station with adjustable arms, which allows for some across-the-body motions which I think will be good for my lateral muscle groups.  Based on reactions at home, I'd say this whole clinking weights thing is working out nicely.

Today's the partial solar eclipse, but it looks like it's also the first Real Autumnal Rain, so I doubt it will be visible.  

Later... the rains obscured the sky, so no eclipse for us.  Got about 90 minutes worth of critiquing in and about 30 minutes of editing.

Journal and Eclipse Dream

Writing:  weekend sickness threw a wrench into things.  So.  Let's see.  Last night I got a critique of a 5000 word story.  I can't believe some of the stupid clerical mistakes I made in the manuscript, but over all the story was well received.  This morning I remembered dreams, got up at 6AM, and wrote them down.   I've got a 1500 word story that is in Very Rough Draft form; I passed it to a beta reader who gave me some really good feedback.

Work-out:  My last work-out was seven days ago.  Sigh.  It was easier during the summer to go in Monday, Wednesday, and Friday; but lately Friday's schedule has put a kabosh on that.  I guess I'm going to have to start going in the evenings instead of the afternoons.

DREAM:   

I'd say that the majority of this dreaming was sparked by the solar eclipse coming up tomorrow (Thursday), a brief conversation about skydiving post-Wordos, and a discussion about ski trips past and future.  

Eclipse Dream

The recall begins at my parent's house.  It's dark and we're waiting for a lunar eclipse to begin.  There's some worry that the eclipse wont be visible because of light clouds.  We're looking east over the Willamette Valley, and then the clouds shift and there's a really huge moon, almost silvery white.  

As we watch, a black circular shadow passes in front of the moon.  It's too quick and small to be the Earth's umbra.  We  leave the house (I don't recall who was with me).  After a short investigation we discover that what we thought was the moon is really some kind of balloon with a light-show projector slung beneath it.  The "eclipse" is really some sort of college game entertainment.

I think my sister appeared at the moment and says something like, "I didn't think this was the real eclipse." or "I didn't think we'd be able to see the eclipse from the house."   I looked north, and there I saw the real moon, thin and pretty far advanced in the eclipse.  White wispy clouds passed in front of it.  We could see it because we were east of my folks' house, but the people inside would have a nearly impossible time siting the moon.  (In waking life, I'm realizing that the moon was in a part of the sky in the dream that it would never be able to reach).  I remember pointing at the crescent moon.

There's a break in the narrative, and the eclipsing moon is over an ocean at the coast.  A front is moving in, and where the ocean meets the shore, a layer of white clouds forms.  

I can see all this because I'm in an airplane on some sort of special tour, with a bunch of middle-aged (60-something?) ladies (there might be some men).  Mark may have been there, and the pilot was a guy.  The pilot was talking about the eclipse and the clouds, and we started climbing.  

I don't recall exactly what happened next.  Either the plane when into a dive, or the engine stopped working, or else this was a skydive tour.  I'm thinking the latter because we were suddenly in jump suits.   

Insert falling scene here, I guess, because we were on the beach.  I had traveled with my portable Stonehenge, which in the dream had transformed from a circular object into a rectangular track that was somehow a cross between a cribbage board and a mancala board.  In the fall, most of the pegs were lost, only the black descending moon's node peg was still in place.  I remarked on this, and then found a $20 bill in one of the mancala holes.  There were some other small trinkets (not possible to be there on the real board) in the mancala holes... things like novelty coins or Renaissance Fair necklaces and beads.  

There's another break.  I think Smokey the cat woke me up here or something.

I was on a airport or train tram with Mark.  We had parked a white rental van in a large dark parking structure.   A track ran straight through a parking lot that was about a block wide on either side.  I want to say that we parked in lot 184A or something like that (at some point in the dream I wrote the number down on a white sock, which subsequently got washed and the numbers ran).

I've got the sequence of events jumbled.

At some point I fell asleep on the train and woke up with it having passed my stop.

At some point I was in a convoy with Mark and possibly our friends, the Husbands.  I think I was driving a white truck.  I think I took a wrong turn and went a considerable distance the wrong way before another off ramp appeared.  And at some point I was in the back seat and no one was driving the car, and I had to reach over the car seat and press the break pedal with my hand to stop the truck before it went through the intersection.  

I vaguely recall a bunch of us were staying in a guest house or an A-frame chalet.  

I may have been driving the truck through a visitors' center or mall.  And the truck may have turned into me just walking.  

I was in a kind of rustic alpine building.  Lots of cobblestone and dark wood beams.  There was a Saturday Market feel, because every three yards or so, there was someone with a booth selling something (like scarves), or handing out brochures.  There may have been someone like Manfred Fischbeck leading dance hikes.  

Behind a tall counter sat a late 20-something guy with two Siamese cats crouching on either side of him with their eyes closed.  "Are your cats friendly?" I asked.

"Well, give them a try; but they don't like just anyone."

I held up my index finger and presented it to one of the cats, who opened an orange eye and started rubbing its whiskers on it.  The other cat came over and they were rubbing their faces all over my hands.

"Wow, they really like you," the guy said.  "You must have a powerful aura."  He stood up, suddenly tall, and his eyes focused just behind me.  I think he said, "You have a lot of yellow in your aura." I recall he said, "You are lord of fire."

"Fire, huh?" I said, "People usually say I'm air."

For some reason I woke up with the name JJ Keek in my head.  There may be such a person with that name, but I have no idea who they could be.