Sunday, December 27, 2009

FIELD NOTES: I am not fascinated by the moon for its science…

Last Sunday in December, 2009

...but for its mystery…and rhythm…for the comfort of its constancy and its reminder of a celestial presence far beyond my human comprehension. Under the moon I find illumination like no other…I indulge in imagination and folklore…I hope for the future and enjoin the idea that someone who is important to me (or perhaps will be important to me) is looking at it the same time I am…is thinking and feeling the same things I am…is as uncertain (or as optimistic) as I am. I try to think primitively, to empathize with ancients who explained the inexplicable with stories and assigned names in the absence of technology either to calm fears or wield power and how their images and words have stayed with us. On this New Year’s Eve the Full Long Nights Moon will occur, the second full moon in a month, and we still call it a Blue Moon. I like to use the moon as the pivot point of a drafting compass, scribing a perfect circle around the world where the reflection of the unseen sun is directed down in a cone of white light. On Christmas Eve, the moon with its top half covered in the first quarter peeked out like a flashlight from under the covers…covers where someone was reading secretly…silently…hungrily...forming their own hypotheses…making their own discoveries…in private, but for all the world to see.

3 comments:

  1. This is absolutely lyrical - I wish I could hold this poetry in my hand, rather than have to experience it through a computer screen!

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  2. Thank you! My Christmas Eve drive is usually a pleasantly introspective interlude - halfway between the finality of the year just passed and the anticipation of the new year to come, somewhere between all I have done and what I am about to do; the one night where I can (naively) hope all is right with the world...

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