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A week ago I saw the first shimmer of this month’s moon. When I stepped from my camper at dawn it was darker than the day before; by the end of the week I was waking to starlight even though my alarm clock setting had not changed. For my body, the new moon is also “the week before my week”, full of iron deficiency, fluctuating hormones, and uncertainty. I’ve learned to try to be quiet on that week…not much writing, not much talking, very little exercise, and plenty of rest; make as few decisions as possible. Cosmic shifts are afoot though, much bigger than wonkiness within my own skin, and so some days life is just odd.

On Tuesday I thought I saw a man killed.

It was an ordinary morning: wet dewy grass, sun glaring at the edge of the tree line, sleepy commuters balancing cups of coffee. I was headed into town for a quiet day of work…he was headed in the opposite direction, looking like he’d just ended his shift. He ran off the side of the road, having over corrected or hit some animal…I couldn’t be sure which. His car bumped in the shoulder and then the ditch for several feet until he slammed into the power pole, snapping it in half. Instantly there were blue and white flashes snapping and whipping as the live wire jumped into the traffic. I wasn’t sure how I saw his car stop abruptly and then seem to jerk backwards, long past the point of collision with the pole but I later discovered why: the wire had reached out for his truck and wrapped itself around the trailer hitch and rear tires. The overgrown ditch and tree line were shrouded in steam and smoke; time sort of held it’s breath.

My cell phone is always in my lap and so I reflexively called 911, certain he could not have survived. I went back and waited for the police to arrive; the power lines were leaning and taught and his truck was wrapped in a sizzling wire. The firemen were first on the scene and the driver was alive! The tires on his truck had protected him from electrocution and though his air bag had exploded and his front end was mangled, he was moving and talking.

Over the next hour they had the power company come and cut him free. I filled out the police report and shakily went on my way. Tuesday was expected to resume it’s normal trajectory.

But with a growing moon and darkening days what is “normal”? The time feels too fluid, the tide too pulled and churning for that. Friends and I misunderstood one another. Unexpected events found their way into small moments of the day. Children’s internal sleep clocks altered, their ears clogged from colds make their voices several levels louder.  Dreams became vivid and ridiculous. One night I dreamed that The Devil wore the shirt of a major bank involved in the current buy-outs. This devil had my future in his hand and was running around behind me, threatening to flush it down a portable toilet until I was banished to a remote corner of the world where it rained bullets. I sat under a tree like Tom Hanks with his Wilson and felt the nocturnal haunting of a cast-away.

The kids have a collection of Halloween paraphenalia: purple hair and chalky white lips while singing The Phantom of the Opera has temporarily replaced the reigning Lego-obsession that used to fill their free time. The “baby” has a set of false teeth for a costume that he carries around, washing in the sink, and rinsing with canker sore cream??? Such mischief comes unexpected; whatever happened to old-fashioned mud pies? Mother spontaneously cooked a nearly-full Thanksgiving dinner in the middle of the week. Two activities were rained out granting time-for-TV on the couch two days in a row… the first time I’ve done that in recent memory, much longer than a year.

I don’t know when Time Change actually rolls over. But when I look in the sky I see we are at a half moon at nearly the half-way point of this month. Sleepy, odd, surreal moments are expected to continue for a few weeks at least, when the cooler days officially settle and we all get homey and hearthy in preparation for the holidays. That moon will have grown full size by then and waned down along with the close of October. I hope November brings with it quietness, contemplativeness, health, and joy, with a quietly rising moon that simply illumines the dark.

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