Last Wednesday, 7th April, my husband told me to look out of our Velux window as the moon was pretty spectacular.
Thankfully he even took a few photographs.
Next day this lunar phenomenon, known as a ‘pink moon’ was in all the papers. We hadn’t read about it so were really fortunate to catch it.
The sky was heavy laden with dense, dark clouds yet still this beautiful moon shone through. Looking at his photographs got me thinking about an analogy between this part-hidden lit-up night sky and the global catastrophe we are all finding ourselves in.
To sum up my thoughts I wrote this:
even behind the darkest clouds the moon and stars still blaze with light; one reflecting the power of the parent sun, multitudes burning through space
Gazing at this closer image my mind picked out a face, pensive yet not perturbed at the prospect ahead. I found it somewhat comforting.
I wanted to give him a little more ‘life’ so used Photoshop Elements to add another dimension. I played around with ‘Adjust Colour’ and ‘Adjust Lighting’ in Enhance, and ‘Artistic, Watercolour’ in Filters.
I was pleasantly surprised just how delineated it became after adding a watercolour filter.
I truly believe that there will be an end to our current crisis.
At the moment what we see is the thick, blanketing cloud that obscures our vision; we can see little to lighten our darkness and almost nothing that suggests a bright, new dawn.
Rather than being an apocalypse, this may well be a chance to get our collective house in order, to see the advantages of not exploiting our planet. As many have remarked, “There is not a Planet B.”
It may also be a chance to go back to putting people first, to caring for the vulnerable, to valuing the different, to promoting talent over opportunity.
I shall borrow from Shakespeare with a quotation from The Tempest (5, 1); Miranda exclaims to Prospero on seeing the shipwrecked mariners and courtiers:
“How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world
That has such people in’t!”
I accept that these are perhaps not the most apt words as these men represented a world that was neither ‘brave’ nor ‘new’.
I am using them to conjure a hope that after the dark a new community-based, future-focused sensibility will emerge, albeit blinking into an unaccustomed brightness.
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Thank you for reading.
Stay well. Stay safe. Stay apart. X
marilyn unmasked 