Amazing but true! The moon and the sun are both sometimes visible in the daytime
Look up, people
I walked the dog this morning (not news, I do it every day). It was cold, but the sun was up and the sky was crystal-clear blue and it’s going to be a good day. I looked up at the sky and saw the moon, a waning, half crescent that was so pale and white it looked like somebody had painted it on a blue canvas. And whenever I see the sun and the moon in the sky together, I’m reminded of a story I once read.
This was probably 20 years ago. I was on a train in the morning headed into the Dow Jones Newswires office in Jersey City, and reading the local paper, the Star-Ledger. The story I was reading was some travelogue from a writer who’d taken a trip to Alaska. At one point, the writer noted that out the airplane window they could see the sun and the moon, both in the sky at the same time, as if that was some kind of proof that Alaska was a world apart. I read that, and I looked out my train window and up in the sky, where I saw…the sun and the moon. In New Jersey. Just like I did this morning. Just like I do every couple of months or so when the two line up. You just have to look up from time to time to realize it’s a common thing.
What do you think an eclipse is!
Forgive my sanctimony, but it just amazed me that the writer must not have ever looked up at the sky in their entire life, and never realized that the sun and the moon can regularly be seen in the sky together, even in industrial, crowded, not-exotic New Jersey. How many other people reading that article realized what I did? How many didn’t? How come no editor questioned that? How many people incuriously sleepwalk through their lives and never look up? How many people look up in the sky and just know from doing so that the sun and the moon sometimes are both in the daytime sky together?
Look up. Look anywhere. Keep your eyes open to what’s around you. It’s important.
I say this for anyone, but it is essential for writers. This, really, is the only talent any writer needs. It’s nice to be skilled in wordplay, able to deploy them like notes in a song (I’m not that kind of writer). But it isn’t necessary. All’s that truly necessary for a writer is to look, to see things with your own eyes and process what you see with your own mind. If you’re not seeing things clearly, you’re not relating anything meaningful with your work. And don’t take this too literally. It’s not just about physical seeing. You can be blind and still perceive things, still be open to the world around you and experience it through your own consciousness. I’m talking about that kind of seeing.
It’s like when you read something and think, oh my god yes, exactly that, that person just wrote something that I never thought about but is obviously true. It’s because that writer had their eyes open, they perceived, and they were able to retell the story of their perception. That’s all writing is, even if they’re making the story up. The reason good fiction works is because it reflects on the real world. The clearer the reflection, the better the fiction. If you want to be a writer, even just a good, average writer (which is where I rank myself), you have to look up from time to time.
Anyhow, I looked up this morning. The dog peed. It’s going to be a good day.