October 27th, 2004

I just finished watching about 45 minutes worth of lunar eclipse outside. I quit when my tolerance for mosquito bites had been reached. I am a half-hearted observer of astronomical phenomena, at best. I’m interested, sure, but not dedicated. I can only recall watching one other lunar eclipse and, if my memory serves me, it will have been over a decade ago and half a hemisphere away. Strangely, although these are the types of things that people watch by the hundreds, possibly the thousands, both times I have been by myself. Technically, Sergei was with me this time, but he’s not big on conversation. I think I will put “watch lunar eclipse with human company” on my list of things to do in this lifetime. It will go before seeing the Pyramids at Giza<%image(20041027-pyramids-giza.jpg|210|171|The Pyramids at Giza, which I have not seen)%>, which I have doubts about getting to, but after seeing Gaudi’s “Sagrada Familia”<%image(20041027-barcelona.sagrada.familia.jpg|350|250|Antonio Gaudi's Sagrada Familia Church, also not seen by me)%> which I’m still determined to do at some point. There’s something strangely contemplative and lonely about observing an eclipse as I’ve done tonight and the last time I did it. I think I had a journal that last time, and was writing in it my impressions. I wonder where those papers might be now, if I still have them, if they say something worthwhile or inane. I would be tempted to hunt for them, if so many of my things weren’t packed now.

For some time now, I have felt as though I am locked away from the person I was before Simone died. There was a person who may have been me, and may have done some things and thought some things but they are so fuzzy and distant that I don’t recognize them as mine. Thinking about other cities I lived in and other people I knew at earlier jobs, in college, and in high school makes me wonder if I really lived all that or if I read it in a book or saw it on tv instead. It’s not so much because the events are faded and uncertain, though they are certainly that. I’ve been plagued with poor memory for my own history all my life, and its one of the reasons I write things down. No, the distance is less about time and more about alienation from the me that is to the me that was. It’s a distance that seems unbridgeable when the death of my daughter exists between the two parts. Tonight, however, I thought I heard my younger self nearby, watching the moon with me. Maybe I am still close to that other self, maybe the person I was is still inside the person I am now.

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