On the Status of My Relationship With the Moon

On the Status of My Relationship with the Moon

.

.

.

Covered in the black tar of death, I wander my way toward snow capped mountains in hopes to find a meaningful path in the face of uncertainty...

.

.

.

In 1608, eleven years before he would complete his three laws of planetary motion that would help revolutionize modern astronomy, Johannes Kepler wrote a science fiction novel about the Moon called Somnium. In it, Keplar described a world divided into two hemispheres: the “sublovan” hemisphere and “privlovan” hemispheres, which represent what we call the “dark” and “light” sides of the moon now. He then goes on to explain how the creatures that inhabit the surface have short life spans because they grow so monstrously huge with “legs longer than that of our camels.” (Very specific, Johannes!) These “hordes” of Moon-dwellers spend their time chasing receding waters making them a nomadic race—a plight they must endure because of their tidally locked world! Kepler had decided to write this novel to convince his fellow peers the motion of Earth would be just as clear to those on the moon as the Moon’s motion is to us. To imagine a civilization on another world would have been well within the confines of heresy back then, so Kepler had risked it all as he tried to use his imagination to reorient his perspective. Later, his mother would be accused of witchcraft and this book would serve as evidence that there was something unholy going on in the Keplar family. Thanks to his wits and intelligence, he would defend her in court and secure her release just a year later. Afterall, in the book, Keplar himself is the main character who falls asleep and has a dream about all that transpires on the moon. He had hidden his visions of another world in narrative layers, perhaps to protect himself from being chastised as a man against God.

.

.

.

            “I’m flying on the Moon…

            My Dear, I’ll be there soon…”

The Moon Song blasted through the empty hallways of the Apex Home School Program, an empty school building I had been working in for over year. Because of quarantine, I had not seen one kid roaming the halls since the previous summer. Deep into winter, I began to feel like I was merely a caretaker of a lonely building at risk of fading into the darkness of its own halls, like when a star eats itself when it reaches that critical point; I was the last cell in a dying vessel, and I inherited it as my precarious domain. Some nights I would ride my bike up and down the halls, blasting the same Spotify soundtracks over and over. Other nights I would lay in the center of the gym, ready for an ethereal rope to tie itself around my ankle and drag me off to some part of the universe where the emptiness I was experiencing made sense. One night toward the beginning of spring, I walked through the lobby vestibule to get some fresh air when I glanced to my left and saw a Super Moon rearing her cosmic head over the horizon.

 “The Moon is on the Horizon,” I had thought to myself. “Yet the world seems dead.” It was a transient moment that washed over my mind like a warm river of milk, soaking into every nerve and cell as if it were coating my very code in a spell that would turn grey loneliness into visceral light. I ran back inside with the vivid images of the Moon’s bleached deserts and rolling hills burned into my head. I began to write and would not stop until I had to bike three miles home back to my little dog PB. It’s a place, it’s a place I kept telling myself. It’s a place where you can run your fingers through the regolith and watch the sparkling dust pour back to the ground like a temporally deficient waterfall. It’s a place where you can walk for miles and miles under the black sky with no fear of running into someone who wants nothing to do with you. It’s a place where you can count the stars without judgement, wondering about the realities that each one holds. It’s a place where you can expound the Earth as you cup her in the palm of your hand, allowing yourself to experience the fragility of something so small and beautiful.

“It’s a quiet and starry place.

Time’s we’re swallowed up

We’re here in space a million miles away….”

                                                                                                                                                        .

                                                                                                                                                        .

                                                                                                                                                       .

The Chinese Lunar calendar dates back to the 14^th century B.C.E and remains in use today for modern Chinese people to keep track of the lunar cycle, traditional holidays and to choose “lucky” days for big events that line up in accordance with the lunar phases. One important tradition lands on the fifth day of the eighth lunar month (October 5^th for us Gregorian folks): the Mid-Autumn Festival, or the Lunar Festival. This festival revolves around the goddess Chang’e and themes of love, sacrifice and awareness of the celestial realm . According to the story, long ago the Earth was surrounded by ten suns, leaving it in perpetual heat and agony. Then one day, a skilled archer named Hou Yi came along and shot down nine of the suns, leaving just one to provide enough warmth for the Earth to thrive.

Impressed by his skills, the Heavenly Queen Mother awarded him the Elixir of Immortality. Upon receiving this gift, he grew scared that by drinking it he would be separated from his beautiful wife Chang’e. One day, he gifted it to her for safe keeping so that they may live their lives together in happiness. One day when Hou Yi was away, a thief who had learned of the Elixir came to steal it. Out of fear that the criminal would succeed, Chang’e drank the elixir to keep it from his grasp. Upon consuming it, Chang’e’s body became weightless and ascended to the moon where she became an immortal goddess eternally separated from her beloved husband.  Heartbroken by his wife’s sacrifice, Hou Yi sent the Jade Rabbit to accompany his wife on the surface of the moon. To honor is wife and her eternal solace on the moon, Hou Yi would leave fruit and cakes as offerings on the courtyard table. From then on, Han Yi noticed that the moon would shine brighter and bigger every day.  Thus, the Mid-Autumn festival was born and each year the Chinese would honor the eternal love of Hou Yi between Chang’e. ()

.

.

.

Alnitak. Alnilum. Mintaka.

As if the boundary of space had descended from above to bridge heaven and earth, I stood upon the top of my new apartment building enveloped in the bitter cold. Tucked inside my jacket was my chiweenie PB; she was sufficiently warm from our mending of body heat, so she sniffed at the air delicately, taking in the moment the best way she knew how. I showed her the three stars that make up Orion’s Belt, pointing to each one to see if her little mind could comprehend something so vague and far way. Alnitak, Alnilum and Mintaka. The cocking of her head likely stemmed from the hopes I was pointing out a bit of smelly cheese or a stray piece of chicken. Even if there was no real interest in cosmos above, I knew that she at least was happy to accompany me as I studied the facets of Orion. It had dawned on me that each star must have individual names, so I yearned to memorize them. Somewhere far off from Orion, the Moon hung silent as she watched us over. I was already two and half semesters into college. One minute I was wading through the heavy fog of absence as I walked the halls of Apex, the next I was trying my best not to get run down by a stampede of new faces. I held my breath as if I was in a vacuum. There was a newfound energy to be harvested in the wake of quarantine, even if the small text of my pact with Luna began to show. My solace in that empty building had seen to it that I write six manuscripts, each one zanier than the last. But crafting world after world with no one to share them with became a heavy task. College had seemed like the right answer. But attending just to find someone to read my stories seemed silly.

My love for the universe had been dredged up from the thick but loose sediment of teenagerhood so I sought out the ways of the observer; I would become an astronomer while continuing to chisel away at my stories and dip my feet into new things. I was quick to take a class that taught me the mind-bending complexity of relativity; what one person sees may not be true for the other, yet both perspectives are allowed to exist simultaneously. Other days I would get home from French and scribble little poems in ode to my constant: J’aimerais aller a la lune alors je peux dancer avec elle loin dessus. It didn’t take long for me to notice that numbers did not come to me easily. It was clear to me then that a relationship with a celestial body does not come without its quandaries. Science would once again give way to art; yet another pane of possibility would crack into the webbed glass of my mind. Encouraging myself from the dusty grey basins of the Moon, I would occasionally lean into my neighbors of the classroom to see what sort of lives were being lived in conjunction with mine. Who among these slivers of light could help shine the way? But jovial daydreams of companionship and shared art gave way under the betraying stutter of my wandering eye. Any momentum I gained would wane with the face of la lune. So, I stood on the roof of my building with little PB, tracing my finger from star to star, telling her their name one by one while we put our trust in the ever-growing light of the Orb of Night…

            Meissa .

Bellatrix .                             

                                                    Bételgeuse .

        Alnitak . Alnilum . Mintaka .

 Saiph .                                  Rigel .

                                                                                                                                                             .

                                                                                                                                                            .

                                                                                                                                            .

In December 1972, Apollo 17 left earth for the moon. The trip took eighty-six hours and fourteen minutes. Commander Eugene A. Cernan, Command Module Pilot Ronald E. Evans and Lunar Module Pilot Harrison P. Schmitt broke the record of longest moon mission at twelve days, six hours and fourteen minutes. Apollo 17 was the first moon mission that brought along a scientist in the form of Harrison Schmitt, who earned his PhD in geology at Harvard in 1964.  On board with Schmitt, Eugene Cernan touched the Lunar Module down in the Taurus-Littrow lunar valley, a place of geological significance while Evans stayed behind in the command module that would orbit the moon while they were on the surface. The crew hoped to find a wealth of information that would help us learn about the history of our oldest neighbor. While Evans was on the dark side of the moon setting records as the most isolated man in existence, Cernan and Schmitt drove around the surface in their rover, collecting samples in what was called “the most varied landing site of all the Apollo mission.” Bleach white Mountains scraping black sky, the grey regolith of the basaltic plains churned with orange volcanic soil from an era long past and the bright sun shining down mercilessly from the emptiness beyond. There was no real way to know that Eugene Andrew Cernan was going to be the last person to set foot on the moon. After days of extraordinary exploration and discovery, the three men would leave the moon behind. Due to dying interest in the public and widespread anger at how much money the Apollo missions were syphoning from taxpayer money, the Apollo missions were canceled. Only four humans who walked are still alive today. We have not left low earth orbit since 1973.

.

.

.

As if I was exhaling smoke from a fire that had finally burned itself out, I watched the clouds of my breath mix into the frigid air. PB trotted by my feet, angrily trying to find a place to relieve herself in the four inches of fresh snow.  High above, the Moon was trying to poke its head from the thinning clouds as light snow still fell. I was already in my last semester. Two years, two apartments and one relationship later, I found myself staring up to the rising light of the Moon. Like a wave finally crashing over a crumbling façade, a large smile grew over my face. It was then I knew I had left something behind, but I couldn’t be sure what. For what seemed like an eternity I had forgotten what it felt like to have a rendezvous avec la lune. But even then, it was a faint feeling, like a billowing fire just beyond the ridge of a darkened hill. A vague warmth began to wash over me as I tried to place the moment in the feeling. I had veered off course, picked the wrong person and proceeded to watch myself crash in slow motion. All those attempts to make contact led to a blinding aneurysm of grey emotion.

For an entire year, the Moon sat rigid in the sky, nothing but an empty rock floating on a pre-determined path. I did not hate it nor did I love it. It had simply lost its definition. It became an expected turning wheel in the greater machine, slowly slipping back from my mind’s eye so that it was just a small source of light occupying a tiny place in the sky. Deafening doubt drummed at my splitting head as I had marched forward in two different directions, obeying thy command to sweat and bleed while turning my head to answer that clarion call.

Silence as a great shell of starry debris spreads outward into space and time. At first it was a blinding light that seized my throat and weakened my limbs. Then shapes and edges became discernable. Over time color bled back into the folds and at long last, I am able to finally draw a breath. It was the cataclysm of a snapping bond that had brought me to my knees. An inevitable convergence of so many thoughts and ideas that quaked the tempered glass of reality and sent it shattering into a place with no context and no real center.

I can’t help that I bleed starlight when I break at the seams.

I can’t help that I seek serenity in the face of solitude.

I can’t help that that you must travel toward empty space to ensure you meet up with your destination.

I can’t help that the stars above me wink out one by one when I clench my fists so that only darkness remains.

I can’t help that I cannot mend my mind to yours so that we may truly erase that need for the nurturing light of la lune.

.

.

.

With my body bound to the shores of the cosmos, where planets and stars make up the grains of the sand, I hold the moon as my eye, dark light bleeding heavenward from an empty socket.