Blue Moon

Tonight is a rare occurance: A blue moon. It's basically just an extra full moon in a calendar month. It's rare to have two full moons in one month, but even rarer to have one on New Year's Eve. The next one will be in 2028. Some parts of the world even get a partial lunar eclipse tonight.

Oh 2009. I wanted such good things for us. I had a plan, an optimistic strategy entitled "Go 2009!" and now, well, dear, I'd pretty much just like you to go.

This year was tougher than most for a lot of people. I could tell you the many ways it was tough for me, but if you've read this blog so far, you already know. I know it was much worse for others. This year saw some dark times, and yet because of it I can say that I grew somewhat. There are good things that came from this awful year. I have to squint and stand back to really make them out, but good things are in there somewhere.

So this New Year's Eve, I decided to do some things differently. My New Year's Eve tradition involves, basically, a variety of superstitions and good luck trickery. I wear red underwear (a Chinese good luck color). I eat 12 grapes at midnight (a Cuban tradition that wishes good luck on each month of the coming year) along with my champagne. I make a series of resolutions that are really just ways for me to catalog what sucks about me, and then list expensive and ridiculously optimistic ways to change such things. I clean my house and wash linens. I usually have people over-just a few-to have good celebratory vibes around. Well, not to be a jerk about it, but that shit hasn't worked.

I am in my office surrounded by tons of stuff that ends up in the second bedroom (and the final exams I have left to grade). You know, the room nobody really goes into and so it collects the random stuff that should really go down to the garage or be folded neatly and be put away. I always clean out this room on NYE. Not this year! I haven't dusted or vacuumed. I don't even think I've made the bed and it's almost 2pm! I didn't buy grapes or champagne. My red underwear is currently at the bottom of my laundry pile. Our plans for the evening? Nothing. We will count down and acknowledge the passing of this terrible year, but not with any of the traditional accoutrements and most likely, by ourselves. No appetizers to make. No mixers to buy. Sounds glorious and free of anxiety. Rancho Relaxo at my place. I'm still superstitious as hell, obviously, as the entire preceding paragraph is basically about casting off old superstitions because I think they may have been jinxing me. But I'm trying to let go of things that might be holding me back. Trying not to be so set in my ways. This next year will bring some big changes, and I want to be ready to meet them.

This blue moon thing kind of illustrates that even though it's rare to have a blue moon on New Year's Eve at the start of a new decade, it's not impossible. And in fact, it is a predictable event. Christians in the Middle Ages used the lunar cycle to calculate the correct day for Easter, and so the extra moon was seen as a form of deception, or in Middle English a "belew" or betrayer moon. Because it made it more difficult to calculate the date of resurrection, it was seen as the devil's way of tricking Christians into observing falsely.

Really though, it's just proof that no matter how you try to organize time and calendars and thoughts, some stuff just doesn't fit into your plans. I'm starting to think that too much planning is almost as bad as none at all.

Here's something else worth celebrating: the end of the decade means the end of these heinous glasses everyone wears on NYE!

Au revoir, doofy glasses. I am glad to see you go!