Brainstorming Bliss

Where I live, this Wednesday night’s weather forecast is predicted to provide an excellent view of this week’s ‘super blood moon’. On Sunday, when the photo above was taken, the rising moon still had its toes under the blankets and even though it’s still not yet a full moon, already looks very close and large.

Rona – the woman on the moon

One night a woman named Rona went to fetch water in her gourd. As she walked, the moon went behind a cloud, causing her to stumble in the dark. In her anger she cursed the moon. To counter, the moon came down to Earth to grab her. She grasped a tree, but was pulled up together with her gourd and the tree. They can all be seen on the surface of the full moon.

(Maori Legend.)

Info. from Te Ara Encyclopaedia of Aotearoa

The inlet all silvery and shivery.

Then darkening to shadows and gold.

Twilight, dusk, sundown, moonrise, early evening, nightfall, eventide, gloaming … whatever. I believe a day’s soft fall into approaching night, could well be my favourite time of the day for a walk. Usually any bothersome wind has abated and there’s no annoying, too-bright daylight making a hat or sunglasses, or both, necessary. The day relaxes into a sigh. I like to be part of that peace, that pause; that small hiatus; before darkness fully arrives.

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When I take a break from writing; or from *brainstorming; to have a cuppa, there’s an old, brown wooden chair I like to sit in. I inherited this chair from my Aunty and it’s one that I remember being in another Aunty’s home when I visited there as a child. This means that by now the chair could very well be over 90 years old. I place the chair in the sun and just sit. Previously, I was never one to ‘just sit’. Ever. So it’s come as a surprise to find I now regard ‘just sitting’ as a luxury I can afford.

Nearby, birds do their thing – not all at once, but every now and again, making their hit and miss, odd and charming appearances – tui announcing territory briefly in the pittosporum, jittery sparrows and chaffinches alighting on last summer’s elderberry, only to immediately take off again as if they’ve received word about some urgent business that needs attending to, elegant, cheeky piwakawaka fanning, flitting and twittering in the kowhai, seagulls crying out as they sail overhead, beautiful in flight, and kereruu beating past with the sound of a skipping rope.

If it’s not pure bliss, it comes pretty damn close.

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*Brainstorming: as in listening to Edvard Grieg, Gustav Holst, Hank Williams, Jimmie Rodgers, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, the Concierto de Aranjuez played by flugle or by guitar, reading about India in the 1870’s, tunnelling down online rabbit holes, or reading a letter my late mother wrote in 2002 or one my brother wrote in 1990 … I count it as research for the many writing projects I have in mind, brain, heart and bones. (I’m thinking of tackling Igor Stravinsky’s The Firebird tomorrow ….)

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