Super moooon

My roommate came in and she asked me, “Did you see the moon tonight?”  No, I had not, but it was, apparently, huge.

Sadly I personally missed this perigee moon as they call it, which occurs when the moon orbits at its closest point to the earth.  The last time this occurred was 18 years ago in 1993.  1993?!  I was barely four then!  After hearing about the super moon now I really wish I had seen it.  If it’s such a rare occurrence, then, man, I missed out…

Thinking about it, however, that is what photography is for, no?  So I proceeded to browse pictures on CNN that showed how the perigee looked all around the world, from our very own national capital in DC to places like Jakarta and the Philippines.  And looking at this, I thought to myself (note: this will sound cheesy, please beware), how amazing nature is.  Thinking about it, isn’t the world around us one of the best forms of art?  Oftentimes, people will ask– sometimes even condescendingly– “What is art?”  In the contemporary art world where so many different works are all considered to be “art”, when indeed it looks like an elephant painted a canvas with its tail, or as if a child had slapped together different planks and called it a sculpture, so many criticize the “easiness of art”.

But what is art, then?  It’s not what is found merely in museums or to be sold in galleries.  It’s what we find to be amazing, beautiful.  The things that we find so fascinating.  And more often than not, this falls under the realm of nature.  I can’t count the number of times I have looked up at the sky and thought it was so beautiful, that it warranted its own frame and space in a gallery.  And seeing how even the moon, which exists in our sky and is visible everyday, can in an instant “change” to captivate us and capture our attention, it goes to show how truly nature is a constantly changing art form.

Sigh.  But the great thing about nature is that most things repeat itself (though some things take more than a hundred years or so to occur).  Which means that hopefully I’ll be able to catch the super moon next time!