Face-to-Face with a Lunar Eclipse In spite of enjoying a direct view indoors of the lunar eclipse in the early hours

of April 15, 2014, I determined that standing in a field away from city lights would surpass looking out a window in visually grasping the natural phenomenon. That is to say, the moon would stand out even more in the darkened sky. So I braved a temperature below freezing at 2 a.m. to come face to face with nature, sans a laptop, phone, and even a theory. The media had hyped the eclipse by promising a bloody moon, yet the actual color was more like that of copper. The infrared shadow-light highlighted the globe's spherical shape, which in turn made outer space more real or actual from my earthly vantage-point. I did not romanticize the cold, airless expanse beyond the Earth's atmosphere. In fact, having interlarded myself into the idyllic picture of new-fallen snow underneath a numinous heavenly sphere, I wore a space-suit of sorts in an optimistic effort to stave off the bitter cold on that mid-April night.
Back in my "capsule" from the dark, cold air, I was no longer content to track the lunar eclipse. Also, I no longer had use for my "space suit," pictured here.

It dawned on me while taking in the nocturnal expanse that my desire to render outer-space more "real" by venturing "out there" is not completely unlike my intent to see the eclipse better by leaving my warm abode. It was as if I were swimming out of a winter submarine to experience the world under the sea directly. Only then would I really grasp it. Taking in the eclipse as directly as I could from terra firma, I found my mind strangely blank. What had crossed my mind when I was casually watching

the eclipse from indoors, such as why the Earth's shadow began on the east side of the moon (it must be orbiting in the opposite direction of the Earth's spin), fell away without the slightest effort, like a reddish leaf in an easy breeze in late autumn. Only on my way back to my toasty capsule did my mind reassume its mantle from having been eclipsed. Once the numinous sphere was out of view, the cognitive void quickly succumbed to thoughts of the wintry weather in midApril, the value of immersion as regards natural worlds, and just how ill-suited we are to many such worlds. Furthermore, it occurred to me that my desire for "immersion" outdoors to more fully realize the eclipse is similar to the desire that is satisfied by the suspension of disbelief in entering the "story-world" of a film, only we don't have to wear "space-suits" in movie theatres. In other words, we humans relish venturing into worlds beyond that which is native (and habitable) to us. The film "Avatar" captures this urge not just to explore, but also to immerse oneself in another world, even if it is beyond our zone of habitation. On one morning last January, I donned my winter "space suit" and ventured outdoors to feel what -44F feels like. I realized through experience how instinctual the human body is in responding to such cold. Yet I was driven to better "know" a world much beyond my "zone of habitation." Perhaps this is what movie-making is about: virtually extending that zone if only for a couple of hours.