01.3 Selenelion

Natalia drove to the Self-Storage on Noell Street. “I’m Alice, the manager,” greeted a round little lady.

“Natalia,” she replied holding a black notebook and a silver Cross pen, “Forensic Pathologist. My ID…”

“Mister Sarin Pholporn!”

“That…that…I will change later.”

“I know,” intoned this pleasant woman wearing reading glasses, “Sheriff’s Office rang to explain all that. So, here are the photocopies and the originals.”

“You remember Joseph Fellon?”

“Of course, I do remember very well,” said Alice, “He is a very short guy. Four-six, four-seven, stout with a reddish-brown tan. Not African, not Hispanic. Caribbean maybe. He wore a hat and suit of the same colour…beige, not precisely, rather yellowish, or macaroon I should say, and a golden watch.”

“Will you remember his face if I show you?”

“Maybe not. I thought his shoes were large.”

“Okay, that is very helpful,” said Natalia and got out of the place. She drove towards Solana Beach.

West side of the highway was private property. Natalia parked the car and took the zebra crossing on S Sierra Avenue. Gate keeper insisted her to walk down the alley to hike down to the beach. When she reached there, it was golden around. The sunset beach; the sky in a glare and waves lazily rolling ashore some hundred feet below, brown cliffs hanging steeply and stretched out in miles. Surprisingly, there were not too many swimmers on the beach. She picked her Minolta, removed her shades and took some photographs of the Pacific Ocean standing on the edge.

Natalia climbed down the narrow stairs to the platform below to a levelled area with few palms and the lifeguard shed. She tapped on the open door.

Dan Nielsen glanced from his sofa. He saw a thin girl in a blue and white flare dress, black sunglasses and red shoes, standing there. A bag and a camera on her left shoulder, a notebook and pen in her hand.

“Natalia!” he cried, “Come in! You look terrific! I wasn’t quite expecting you like this!” Only little thing that might distract her for a guy was the thick reddish-orange lipstick she painted on her thin lips. Or perhaps her voice with a slight vibration. She stood 5 feet 4 inches tall. Hair tied back in ponytail. And still, Dan could not figure out that she was a he.

“Thank you,” she stepped inside a comfortable lodge, “This place looks great!”

“Yes, I am hired by the owners to keep watch on the beach. I am no longer going to the auctions because I keep losing too much.”

“Are you coaching tennis?” asked Natalia.

“No,” he said, “I’m keeping full time here.”

“Well…”

“I sold those musical instruments and threw the rest away. And this here is the rug I told you about. I kept this and this looks nice. It is handmade. No label.”

Natalia reached the brown rug hung on the wall, “What kind of fabric is this?”

“Some fibre,” replied Dan.

‘Selenelion’ written on top in darker brown and below the hieroglyph it read, ‘Circo en Corpus Christi’.

“What does it mean, Selenelion?”

“I think it is what they call the circus,” explained Dan Nielsen, “See this symbol, the large circle is encircled by the rays of the sun. It’s golden as you can see. You find a brown circle with a thick border in the middle. Actually, there are three circles forming in the sign. The Sun, the Earth and a void centre circle is the Moon.”

She sat down on the sofa, dropped her handbag and opened the notebook, knees placed together.

“Selenelion is a very rare phenomenon where an eclipse of the moon takes place with the rising sun at the same time. During a total lunar eclipse, the Sun and Moon are exactly 180 degrees apart in the sky. In the incidence of a selenelion, the Sun and Moon appear, or they appear to appear, slightly above the horizon and that is due to atmospheric refraction.”

“Atmospheric refraction…” she scrawled.

“However,” he continued, “the window of seeing this phenomenon is very tight. You probably have two to ten minutes depending on where you spot it occurring. So, the hieroglyph here is depicting those three heavenly bodies in a straight line. A lunar eclipse.”

“I get it,” said Natalia excitedly.

“And there is something very interesting,” said Dan Nielsen, “Are you Roman Catholic?”

“No,” Natalia shook her head.

“Corpus Christi means the Body of Christ. Day of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Jesus Christ the Lord. You feast that day. Sometimes you see the portrayals of the Saints in the churches with sparks around the figures just like the rays of the sun. It’s called a monstrance.”

“Say it again!”

“A monstrance. An aura holding the holiness in solemnity to the Holy Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. You may notice, this ring appearing above the crown or a cup. A cup that holds wine or blood, all that sum up to Lauda Sion, Corpus Christi, the feast.”

“Lauda Sion…” she noted down, “Well…”

“They have chosen their symbol of a selenelion occurring in the spectrum of the monstrance to represent the base of Corpus Christi, their home in Texas.”

“Wow!” cried Natalia, “That’s very interesting.”

“Yes, it’s beautifully done, very complicating but all come together.”

“Did you find this symbol in any other item?”

“No, no labels, I’m sure.”

“May I take a photograph of this?”

“Of course.”

Natalia took a few shots and Dan Nielsen helped to take some pictures with the rug in her background.

“I will step on the beach before I go.”

“Let me escort you to the beach!” he said, “We’re having a strong stench coming from a phenomenal ‘red tide’, it is called. See, the sea is reddish brown. And in the night, it transforms into an impressive blue light show. As the red tide breaks down, oxygen is reduced and fish die in the lagoon, wash up on the beaches. It’s San Diego.”

“Yes, it is. Insane!”