Instructions for Being More Alive – The Marginalian

admin — Sat, 11 Oct 2025 07:58:30 +0000

[ad_1]

By Maria Popova

We spend our lives trying to see our own light, to catch its surprising refractions on the face of the world, to play in its waterfalling golden blue radiance until we are ready to lie down in the bright black of time as the stars go on spinning, their fractured hieroglyphics encoding the memory and mystery of being alive.

Sarah Williams — one of the five wonderful women in my intergenerational poetry group — offers a shimmering set of instructions for how to do that in her splendid poem “How to See the Milky Way,” read here by Rose Hanzlik — the youngest member of our constellation — to the sound of Mozart’s “Moonlight Sonata” against a painting of the Milky Way by Étienne Trouvelot.

HOW TO SEE THE MILKY WAY
by Sarah Williams

Travel far
from crowds. Leave
lit places that yellow the sky.

Bodies of water help.
Pick a cloudless night,
a new moon.

Find a place to rest your head,
perhaps on someone’s chest,
their heart keeping time.

Or float in still water
flecked with stars
rippling around you.

However you arrive
parallel to earth and sky,
settle your eyes in their soft sockets and wait.

Look up.
Disregard the march of satellites,
their plotted lines.

Linger here.
Drink speckled light
from billions of neighboring stars.

Some nights your life is like this.

Couple with “The Whole of It” by Hannah Fries — another of the five women in our poetry group — then revisit Ellen Bass’s lifeline of a poem “Any Common Desolation,” which has been an ongoing inspiration to all of us.

[ad_2]

Don’t miss the rare black moon rising August 22

admin — Wed, 20 Aug 2025 03:48:45 +0000

[ad_1]

It’s safe to assume you’ve heard the term once in a blue moon, which refers to the rare occurrence when there is a second full moon in a calendar month. But you might not have heard the term “black moon.”

However, on Saturday, August 23, at precisely 2:06 a.m. ET, a black moon is taking place. Although it sounds like something out of a dystopian novel, it’s not that ominous. Let’s take a deeper look at what this all means.

What is a black moon?

Much like great artists such as Picasso, the moon goes through phases. The moon’s version is cyclical, lasting around 29.5 days. A full moon occurs when Earth is between the sun and the moon, and the side of the moon facing Earth is lit up by the sun. A new moon is the exact opposite of a full moon. It occurs when the orb is between Earth and the sun—however, the side facing Earth is shadowed and dark, making the phenomenon invisible to the stargazer.

Similar to a blue moon, if two new moons occur in the same month, the second is considered a black moon.

But there are actually two types of black moons. The other type is based on seasons. It is the moniker given to a third new moon in a season of four new moons, which is what is happening this weekend.

For those in the Northern Hemisphere, summer began on June 21, and new moons took place on June 25 and July 24, making August 23 the third in the lineup. (The fourth will take place on September 21, which is just a day before the equinox signaling the beginning of fall.)

How often does this type of black moon happen?

Seasonal black moons only happen about once every 33 months, according to the Time and Date website.

What does this black moon have to do with the Milky Way?

To some degree, our home galaxy, the Milky Way, is always visible in the night sky. During the summer months, the center of this massive grouping of stars, planets, and dark matter rises higher, making it more visible to the naked eye.

A black moon sky is the perfect time to attempt to see the Milky Way, because the night is even darker than normal. So, although you cannot see a black moon itself, it might just benefit your Milky Way viewing.