Once again, as always, a warm bed sorely tempted us to forgo one of this planet's singular pleasures. But the battle against sleepy comfort was won; the warm dark did not hold us back from the cold, but rich contemplation of our neighborhood in space. The city and square below our rooftop perch tossed fitfully in anticipation of the onrushing dawn, but our eyes were drawn up and out, hoping for an explosion of wonder similar to last year's.
It was not what we had hoped for, but perhaps it was even better.
As we slouched low in our chairs, necks craned not uncomfortably, the sky thickened from black to leaden; the pale pinpricks of the stars dimmed and most became obscured; the city lights, leaping into the night sky, rebounded and fell back. Black night became purple and the Leonids, so brilliant in anticipation, so brilliant from our vantage last year, were lost.
So we turned our attention from the royal swell of night to the rising tide of dawn.
To the southeast, Boston's two towers, Prudential and Hancock, catch and hold between them swift steel blows of cloud, ripping stripes in the distant blue and letting a slow yellow rise up through the tears. The Hancock building is, as it is every morning and evening, a mirrored gnomon on the terminator between night and day. One side, facing away from the sun, is still a stark portal into night, while the other captures the morning's spark within its deep blue and nutures it into a blaze that seems to catch the sky itself alight and not the other way around.
Swinging north along the city's spine, past the bunched and huddled towers of the Financial District, the Zakim Bridge straddles the dawn at this time of year. Brightness swims up the sky, pursued by waves of orange, outlining the Zakim's monumental wishbones, and flowing over the city to mingle with the tiger stripes of racing cloud. The imminent birth of the sun is announced by a roiling crimson, caught for a moment in the Bridge's net, then bursting forth to flood the sky with blood. The Hancock is now a crimson banner, calling the city awake to the daily struggle.
We had no view this morning of night's black depths, punctured here and there by briefly twinkling motes of stardust. We had no cause to wonder today at the cosmic metaphor of the meteor shower, how above and below share the mingling of horror and beauty. Instead, we received our own Earth's eternal dancing answer to the darkness, as our planet spins like a dervish to the music of sunrise, and calls us up from slumber to do the day's glorious work.
The sun, lifting my spirit with it, rose.
[I have got to scan some of my pictures.]
What I wrote after last year’s show:
I've climbed out of a warm, cozy bed before to go out and stand or sit in the frigid air, getting a crick in my neck and all for nothing--maybe two or three pale trails, snuffed quickly. No meteor shower has ever lived up to the hype, but I always promise myself I'll keep looking. Last night I set the alarm to pull my wife and myself from slumber around 3:00. When we woke it was a team effort to actually drag our sleepy selves into wakefulness.Posted by MartialIt was the meteor shower of my dreams. Blazing trails of light, again and again, stars fell around us. At first, laughter and gasps of wonder. But as the morning wore towards dawn and the light kept coming down like dew, we settled into speechless awe and I felt myself lifted, reoriented. No longer a shivering monkey at the bottom of a gravity well looking up; a citizen of the galaxy, at peace, looking out at my backyard.
