Wednesday 29 September 2010

The moon and lies...

There’s a fascination about the moon, at least I find it fascinating, but you should never look at her for too long, she can hurt with her cold beauty.

I don’t know why the moon should be a woman, it just seems to have always been that way; but she drags me in, captures, drives me mad; could turn me quite lunatic if I wasn’t careful. She’s had so many names; Aega, Allison, Arianrhod, Bendis, Candi, Chanh-O, Diana, Ems, Hekate, Isis, Juna, Luna, Sadarnuna – the Sumerian goddess of the new moon.

I could stare at her all night. Yes, I know I shouldn’t, but I’m already a little lunatic in its gentlest form - foolish; eccentric; perhaps a little crazy. I see every shade of grey in the moonlight, the truth and many lies. I search for truth in the chaos of the night, looking between the lies to glimpse moonbeams of truth.

There, I told you I was a lunatic. I shouldn’t stare so much.

As a boy, I remember my grandmother coming into my room on nights when the moon was very bright, making sure that the curtains were drawn tight against the light.

She’d tell me that if the moon shone on my face as I lay in my bed that I’d die inside of a year. It was her gypsy blood I think, drawn up like the tides to the surface as the moon shone full.

I let it happen once, opening the curtains wide so that the bright full moon flooded onto my face as I lay in my green candlewick-spreaded bed. I left them open for over an hour, allowing my skin to bathe in the cold white light, absorbing the death rays that I imagined that light must contain.

My head was full of science fiction movies; ‘Forbidden Planet’, ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’, ‘It Came From Outer Space’, ‘Invasion Of The Body Snatchers’. It seemed perfectly reasonable to my nine year old mind that the light of the moon might kill you if you were exposed to it for too long. In my mind my gypsy blooded grandmother’s tale was metamorphosed into fact by way of a scientific explanation gleaned from American ‘B’ movies watched at the picture house on North Street every Saturday morning.

For a year I waited to die, and when I didn’t felt a tiny twinge of disappointment.

How silly we are as children, how gullible. How could I think that by allowing the light of the moon to shine on my face that I could die?

They say that if you stand in the moonlight of the full moon for long enough, wishing hard and concentrating on what you would become, that you can change yourself into anything you choose.

But then the same ‘they’ say that if you look between the lies you’ll find the truth.

Maybe I’ll become a cat.

6 comments:

  1. Philip Morgan commented on Facebook.

    Philip wrote
    "The Moon is a mysterious satellite for sure. Good post Andy, but then again, they always are. We're so lucky to have the Moon as a silent partner. Without it I doubt we'd be here. It impacts (has impacted) on the human race so much and we have created so many myths, legends and theories due to it that we should have respect due to it.
    Sure, it's a rocky ball of dust, rock, ice and hollow space but we need it and it needs us - otherwise it's Space 1999."

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  2. Michelle Haendl commented on Facebook:

    Michelle wrote
    "The moonshine on water is my favourite. There was an amazing Harvest moon here in the mountains last week."

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  3. There was a beautiful moon over the river on Saturday night. I sat in the conservatory looking at it.

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  4. There was a beautiful moon the night of the party last Friday. My mum commented when she dropped me off, "it's a bombers moon".

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  5. I heard this week that it was another planet called Thea which in a more erratic orbit collided with earth throwing bout the debris giving rise to the moon. This is thought to have happened 4.5 billion years ago. So the moon is a part of us and you rightly give it the respect it deserves.

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