Looking Up

My fascination with the sky and everything about it began a very long time ago. If I really think back it probably began at birth; as a sun sign of Cancer I am ruled by the moon, but as a wanna-be beach bum I am driven by the sun so everything that cycles in between these two astrological wonders just fits into the puzzle perfectly. In our first apartment after my parents got divorced many sunny afternoons were spent lying in the backyard staring up at the clouds and sky. I would try to make sense of the shapes and visualize them as other objects like animals or faces. One of my very favorite faces in the sky is sometimes referred to as the Man in the Moon.

Perhaps it does not receive attention like the sun because it does not emit warmth or as much light, but this powerful force of nature is responsible for so many things, most notably the change in tides. Regardless of clouds blocking our view of her, the moon rises and sets everyday just like the sun. With a little help from the sun, the tides ebb and flow due to the shear pull of the moon. Last night when I snapped the photo above at Revere Beach, the moon was almost full, resulting in what is called a spring tide. This is when the tides are at their highest high and lowest low (during full & new moons only). As I was thinking about this today it made me laugh for two reasons. First, because the planet is essentially bi-polar, and second all the old folks who did not believe that the Earth was round were essentially correct.

Some might say that the Earth is round, but I would beg to differ. Changes in tide have absolutely nothing to do with water flowing in toward the shore or moving out away from it but actually occur when the moon pulls the water up toward itself or pushes away on the other side of the planet, like a magnet. When the moon pulls the tide is low, high tide is during the push, so technically the Earth would have a bulge causing it to retain an elliptical shape. Now scientists may dispute this fact stating that the radius of the Earth is determined by how the rays of the sun hit the Earth and where their shadows cast at various times of the day and year and since the rays are straight lines that determines the perfect circle…yada, yada, yada. In theory I agree with all of that to be true but as a gal who is guided emotionally and spiritually by water, most notably the ocean, I have to wonder if science is just too scientific and needs to spend a little more time feeling the rise and fall of their own emotions while looking out over a large part of what sits on top of our planet.

It makes me wonder what would happen if the sun and moon were no longer in alignment to each other, thrown off axis in a manner of speaking and our gravitational pull was compromised. Would the water on the Earth’s surface fling endlessly into space heading directly toward the moon on one side and the sun on the other? I would want to be at the edge of the ocean in that moment so I could watch as the water careened into the side of the moon and splashed off into outer space.