We Did Not Hang the Moon

There is no wind there. Nothing moves unless forced to do so, and there is no force there besides a dollop of gravity. And even if you were there, waving your hands like a fan at the ground of dirt (at this place, dirt is called regolith which means blanket of rock), the dirt would not move. The regolith possesses no evidence of life: no seed, no root, no organic matter. Despite cosmic rays, radiation, and gold, nothing turns toward the sun or seeks the attention of a possible lover. There, there is no attention. There, there is no lover.

I turned to my husband, who is a space expert, and implored him. Are you sure that nothing moves on the Moon? He went on about the footsteps of astronauts—over 50 years old—and how they’re still there, perfectly preserved. There is no wind there to wave the American flag so a metal rod was placed horizontally with the flag. Because the astronauts struggled with the rod, there is a permanent rippling in the motionless flag.

Earlier in the day, I donned boots and walked in a cold, snowy world devoid of color. It’s like the Moon, I said to my dog Silas. I took careful steps on the snow, beneath which the Earthen lives I love dearly were sleeping, resting inside the sap and root of themselves. The sun in the bluebird sky, violently bright, pierced my eyes as we walked southward. The brightness blanched every branch and shrub I passed and rendered the darkness of my eyelids a muted red. I took to turning around to see the illuminated black, white, and mahogany world around me. That’s when I saw, in the whitescape, one of my favorite pastels: lichen. I walked up to it, a landscape itself of anti- and syncline. Ridges and valleys of fungi and alga live there symbiotically with curlscapes and wrinklescapes, all of it only the size of my finger. I looked down at my black boots in the pristine snow, aware that I was standing in a valley surrounded by ridges. Aware that just beneath my small feet, just within that finger of lichen, was more life than on the Moon, as we know it.

Earth and Moon have danced together for more than 4 billion years. In the beginning, both were hot and red, covered in magma, and the Moon, much closer at that time when time didn’t exist, hung like a dinner plate on the horizon. Only 13,000 miles away from one another—the distance from me in a valley to another human in an Australian valley—they gazed and turned and burned. The molten ocean on The Moon gave way to Lunar mare (meaning Moon sea)—the dark areas of the moon that were not seas, but dark, basaltic plains.

I continued my walk on the snowy path, exhilarated by my dog’s haphazard joy. Despite the differences in the rods and cones in our eyes, we could both take joy in the deep blueness of the sky. I remembered reading one time that this, too, was space. I lifted my hand to move a wayward branch away from my face, and my hand, it moved through space. Despite that seemingly blue border of sky, despite this vivarium of breathable air in which we tread and despite the spectrum of colors that we celebrate and use to cast horrid judgments, we are in space. Space, a cold, devoid Nothingness punctuated by somethingness here and there. A Nothingness we can call a place.

Imagine the night-time darkness of porches and patios, bowls of water everywhere absorbing Moon’s light. Imagine Earth’s gorgeous stones—the oil-slick labradorite, the glassy tourmaline, the pearly moonstone—lining the windowsills and patios charging in Moon’s light. Imagine the smell of burning sage, imagine dancing, imagine howling, imagine slow walks, imagine the infant Buddha slipping from the salty canal and into existence, imagine self-proclaimed witches launching into arguments over who can or cannot curse the Moon, imagine a night of debauchery and violence all because Moon is Sun’s mirror, reflecting light. Moon, like Sun, always in the eye of its beholders, is our relic of belief. It stays. It has not left us yet. It reflects not only light, but us. The belief that Moon will charge, heal, and stimulate lunacy leads to the myriad relationships and connections one has with it. Just as its pull and release creates the tides, humans, also made from salt and water, believe that they too are pulled and released by it. Living phasal lives, women who bleed once per lunar cycle and women with large moon bellies for nine lunar cycles claim Moon as female. Enduring eight phases a month yet being billions of years old, she certainly deserves to be called New twelve or thirteen times a year. If you ask me, Moon is always full.

But I always called it a Half Moon, I once told my husband years ago after he corrected me and said it was a Quarter Moon. I understood the correction, aware that Moon had a whole other side we couldn’t see. But at that precise moment, only half a circle was illuminated. So the Moon is never actually full then, I said, irrationally perturbed. I have grown since. Now, I only become slightly perturbed with new information and surprising knowledge, that is, if I’m not already amazed with wonder. I choose the latter.

Our snowy walk devoid of color variation led our eyes to pay attention to movement and shape. Even Silas paused in his meanderings as a bird alarmed the forest of our presence, flitting from branch to branch. It was a red-bellied woodpecker, its head a bright blaze of orange-red, its wings rippled in black and white. It played the same game most birds do, flying to farther branches the closer we approached. If humans were to idolize red-bellied woodpecker the way they do the Moon, the sight of one would bestow upon the beholder new opportunities and inspiration to seize desires. In some traditions, its drumming against the tree is indicative of Earth’s heartbeat. The red upon its head—and many woodpecker heads—symbolizes mental faculties and resilience. Woodpeckers possess a supportive structure for their tongue—called the hyoid—that allows its head to withstand the force of pecking. The hyoid curves like a circle from the tongue and down around the head, ending at the beak. A Moon of muscle and bone protects the bird’s skull like a helmet. Eventually, the red-bellied woodpecker disappeared into the bright black boughs.

Later on the walk, Silas stepped into a cold, black stream. I watched in curiosity and surprise when he did not retract from the icy water but continued forward, slowly submerging his legs and belly into the shocking cold. He looked up at me from the middle of the stream and continued crossing it. I envied him, also wanting to submerge myself into icy water. A cold body of water that would inspire the white of my eyes and the O of my mouth, my arms rising above my head as my solar plexus comes to life and my lunar plexus ignites…in pain? Or pleasure?

Eventually, Earth’s feverish glow gave way to a large body of water—larger than what it is today. The hydrosphere gave way to single-celled organisms, oxygen, photosynthetic life, ice, complex life, land, land plants, and a long eventually later, humans like me who approach snow in the dark shades of spring-time, wondering if it’s still cold. Humans and their dopey faces when they realize that yes, snow, which is made of ice, is still cold when it’s warm outside. Moon, at its equator, can reach temperatures of 250 degrees F. At night, Moon’s poles can be colder than -210 degrees F.

238,900 miles away, Moon continues to dance with Earth, sometimes donning a red or pink dress depending on the mood ring that is Earth’s atmosphere. Master of illusion, Moon appears almost close enough to kiss when she hugs the horizon. The past few weeks, on my night walks, she has been absent in the night. Jupiter and the belt of Orion have been accompanying me, along with the rain, blustery winds, and snow. In January, she has many names, all indicative of human’s relationships to her:

Old Moon

Wolf Moon

Cold Moon

Moon after Yule

Frost Moon

Ice Moon

Hard Moon

Great Moon

Severe Moon

Greetings Moon

Frost Exploding Moon

Canada Goose Moon

Moon of Frost in the Tepee

Centre Moon

O, glorious Frost Exploding Moon where astronauts left 96 bags of their excrement as well as junk like TVs and tools that the astronauts no longer needed, all in the name of Science! This species called humans love using Moon to inspire their quips and wisdoms. Appropriately, the phrase He did not hang the Moon, meaning he is not as important as he thinks he is. The bags of shit sit in a silence and stillness that would drive any human into lunacy, with a glorious view of the blue planet that rotates within swirls of white clouds and flashes of lightning. And if the bags of shit look even closer, areas of the blue planet illuminate in the darkness, raging against the dying of the light. Raging against their natural rhythms. And if the bags of shit look even closer still, so, so closely, they will witness large groups of small, winged things called birds navigating by moonlight. And closer still, the bags of shit would notice this small, insignificant lady and her golden, four-legged shadow called Silas, both so moved by the movementless Moon in the bluebird sky.