Tonight, after I got out of work, I stepped outside and breathed in the best, crisp Fall air. Earlier in the day I had seen the moon rising from my 3rd floor cubicle, even as the sun was still bright. I knew it was going to be a bright moon. I just had a feeling.
Midnight came, and I got out of the well-lit parking lot as soon as possible and headed home. The air was finally cold. The time since the last cold spell was here felt like twenty years ago. Surely we were due for fall weather, as it is now the beginning of November, but it had waited until now to finally show up. My Old Navy hoodie I had grabbed earlier in the day, seemed sufficiently warm while the sun was still shining. Now, it was hardly keeping up with the chill. Every breath I took was making my lungs contract, and sending cool air coursing through my insides. It was refreshing.
The sky seemed to match the air. I love crisp Fall nights. My gaze always goes to the sky on nights like this. I feel like if the air is that crisp, the sky must be crystal clear. And it was tonight. I stepped out of my car when I got home, only to be met with a sky plastered with tiny white dots, eery clouds, and a giant bright moon. It was perfect.
The stars were so clear and bright, even Vincent van Gogh would have wanted to repaint them. There were thousands of them, probably millions if my eyes had adjusted enough to see them, and I had been far enough away from city lights. The clouds were eery-looking, almost as if they were part of a Tim Burton illustration, a sort of dark pink color. The closer to the moon they got the more white they were, yet with the same outlining color, just to keep their creep-factor. And the moon - it was practically a spotlight. The shape of sunny side up egg. Not half, and not quite whole, but rounded enough on the top that it was almost pulling off being a circle.
My old friend the moon. I couldn't help but stare, standing there in the middle of my apartment complex parking lot, just taking it all in, those eery clouds, the millions of stars, and the big bright moon, and breathing in the crisp, clean, Fall air. The moon seems better in air like this, and accompanied by this many stars.
I took a long walk with the dog around the complex so she could enjoy it too. She was more occupied with the grass, which had a wonderful dewy aroma, and only made the night more perfect to my senses. That Old Navy hoodie was no longer sufficient at keeping me warm, and all those deep breaths of crisp, cool air had now filled my lungs and my body with a chill that wasn't leaving.
The only thing that would have made this night better was if it had happened in the middle of nowhere (or on a beach), and if it included the heat of a fire on my face. And possibly s'mores. :)
In the meantime, my knees were reminding me that I was nowhere close to a fire, so I walked back home, crawled under a blanket, turned on some Michael Buble, and wrote about my old friends, the moon and stars. I'll be back to visit them again tomorrow night. Sure as anything, they will look just enough different, it will give me something new to dream or write about.
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