The Nine Days Before the Eclipse

Written from Pererenan on the third of August, nine days out from the eclipse.

The moon rose late last night, and she rose already missing a piece of herself. Eighty one percent lit, if you want the number. Softer than that if you were only looking. She came up over the rice behind the house sometime after nine, orange the way she always is when she has to climb through the haze coming off the fields, then white, then simply a light lying across the tile that meant I did not need to turn on the lamp beside me.

Nine days from now that light goes out entirely. Not slowly. On the twelfth of August, or the thirteenth here in our time, the sun and the moon meet at nineteen degrees of Leo, and in some part of the world the middle of the day will go dark.

"The dark is not the opposite of the light. It is the part of the light you have not been shown yet."

I do not want to write to you about the eclipse. Everyone will write about the eclipse. Almost nobody writes about the nine days that walk up to it, and the walk up to it is where the real work happens. The eclipse is the door. These days are the hallway.

The moon is subtracting, and you are allowed to subtract with her

From tonight until the twelfth, the moon gives back a little more of herself every evening. Eighty one percent now. Fifty one on the sixth. Twenty nine by the eighth. Four percent by the eleventh. Then nothing at all.

This is the only stretch of the month where the sky models the thing most of us are worst at. Not letting go with a replacement already lined up, which is just trading. Letting go without knowing. The moon does not hold out for a better offer before she releases her light. She simply releases it, night after night, on schedule, in public.

What the sixth is asking of you

On the sixth the moon reaches her last quarter, half lit and half not, sitting in Taurus. Taurus is the body. Not the idea of the body, the actual one. The shoulders that have been up near your ears since June. The jaw. The three hours of sleep you keep meaning to give back to yourself.

A half lit moon in Taurus is a very specific instruction, and it is this: whatever you are trying to decide with your mind this week, your body already knows the answer and has known it for some time. You are simply waiting for permission. Consider this the permission.

The three days almost nobody talks about

The ninth, tenth and eleventh are what the old traditions call the balsamic moon. Under four to eighteen percent light. The last thin curve before the dark. In every tradition I have learned from, these are rest days. On your calendar they are a Sunday, a Monday and a Tuesday like any other.

Do less on those three days. I mean this practically. Do not launch, do not send the difficult message, do not sign. Wash your hair slowly. Cook something that takes longer than it needs to. Let the calendar have a hole in it and refuse to fill the hole. You will get the time back on the other side of the twelfth with interest, and I have watched this be true for ten years now.

Why it matters that it is Leo

An eclipse in Leo does not ask what you have achieved. Leo is not the sign of achievement. Leo is the sign of the heart, of being seen, of what you make simply because making it delights you.

So the question underneath these nine days is not what should I let go of. It is quieter and considerably harder. Where have I been performing a version of myself that no longer delights me, and who exactly am I still performing it for?

You do not have to answer that this week. You only have to stop looking away from it.

A practice, one line long

Each night between now and the twelfth, before you sleep, name one thing you are willing to stop carrying. Out loud, to the ceiling, to the dark. One a night. Nine in total. Do not write them down, because writing them down turns them into a project, and this is not a project.

Then on the twelfth, when the moon goes fully dark and the sun goes with her, you will not be standing at that threshold holding everything you were holding in July. You will be standing there with your hands mostly empty, which is the only way anyone has ever walked through a door.

The moon will come back. She always does, on the fourteenth, as a sliver so thin you will have to know where to look. And you will know where to look, because you will have watched her leave.

With love from Bali,
Myrah.

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A Piece for the In Between

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