I like photographing street lamps. Still, this post will be about a substitute for a street lamp. We call it the Moon.
Today (I wrote this text on the 7th of December, 2022), I noticed the Moon in Warsaw’s sky. It resembled a street lamp. When I spotted it, I started to wonder whether I would go out for a walk wearing summer clothes in frigid temperatures. While writing this text, it was 2 degrees Celsius (35.6 degrees Fahrenheit). Still, it was raining. That’s why I needed to decide whether to take a 40-minute walk. Let’s get back to the substitute for a street lamp. I believe the Moon is no longer a wonderment object for most people. Who still feels a sense of wonder when one sees the Moon hanging in the night sky? Of course, there are such people.
Still, I can only envision the Moon’s impression on prehistoric and ancient people.
Sometimes, I imagine myself as an ancient human who observes the night sky and is impressed and scared of the heavy, shining, and flat disc. Did ancients know that the Moon “shines” because the Sun’s rays are reflected in it? Did they know that Luna supposedly formed during a collision between the Earth and another small planet, in size similar to Mars? The debris from this impact collected in orbit around Earth formed the Moon. That’s why 4.5 billion years ago, today’s substitute for a street lamp was ten times closer to Earth.
I cannot imagine they knew all these things.
Indeed, we still have more questions regarding the Moon than answers, like our ancestors. While writing this text, I decided I wouldn’t go to take a walk today. I will do it tomorrow. It should be a little bit colder and without rain and snow. Perhaps tomorrow, I will shine like the Moon and the stars and the Sun. I hope John Lennon was right in one of his most tremendous songs, “Instant Karma.”
