When I Talk To The Moon, It Talks Back--As You Can Imagine

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The moon was so big — almost glaring if it wasn’t so intoxicatingly beautiful.

“You know I love you,” I told it.

“I do,” it said, with a little wink. “I love you back.”

I watched the gauzy clouds pass by the moon’s light, which turned them into a misty veil.

It was crisp out, and I shivered. I tucked my hands in my pockets so I could sip the experience for a few minutes in my Adirondack chair, where Kitten and I used to sit when she was alive.

“Can you see her?” I asked the moon. “By the back fence? She’s next to Mama — the two nestled underground beneath that circle of rocks and blanket of dried leaves.”

The moon murmured low, but I have moon ears.

“No,” I answered, “That’s not her meow. That’s sirens in the distance, the sound of misfortune. I feel sad for someone, something, somewhere.”

I unpacked my mother-in-law’s hand-me-down binoculars from their case. They’re high-end even though they’re a bit broken. Only a hardcore ornithologist would own such a thing — which she was. I think of her when I put them up to my eye sockets. How many birds have they magnified? Tonight, they magnify this big, blazing beauty.

“You’re so rich and complicated,” I say, “even though we compare you to us and think you’re a stale, cold rock.” I feel guilty telling the moon this, but don’t you think it should know the truth? Maybe not.

I could see its craters and large basaltic plains — the patterns, the white, grays, and delightful spots. It’s a modern painting.

Maybe there are paintings in each one of us, I think. Maybe a human is a painting that only binoculars can reveal.

I looked around and saw how the light from this giant, stale rock turned the blackened tree silhouettes into discernible shadowy creatures. The air moved just barely and the leaves still left on the tips of trees fluttered as an afterthought to each pass-through of air.

I was mesmerized by the planes passing above. Not the ones low and fat, ready to land soon. Not the ones reduced to mere dots, moving at cruising altitude toward somewhere far away. But the ones perhaps off to the next big city, just high enough that I couldn’t hear them, and low enough that I could see their bodies skim the far edge of earthen life.

Often, I listen to a guy on the Insight Timer meditation app — Tom Evans. In one of his guided meditations, he talks about the brain as both a generator of thought and a receiver of thought. He means we can notice the world and “just listen.”

I listened that night. I didn’t generate thoughts or meaning. I didn’t connect things to make sense. I listened.

What did I hear? I heard the fact of the moon — its simple existence. I heard the reality of the trees, the darkness, and the slow, cold breeze. I heard the materiality of planes and the fox tail I suddenly saw move along the ground line in the wooded distance. I heard the season changing rapidly and the sound of the passing of time. I heard time just as it is, which sounded like the moon — matter-of-fact, as-is, an existence removed from its particulars.

One day the moon will go and so will Earth. I’m not part of that story. I’m not even a memory in it. Like everything at such a celestial scale, it’s just a truth devoid of meaning.

I’ve met people — usually younger than me by decades — who refuse to hear such a thing: finality. They put their hands up to cover their ears. “Not now,” they say. I understand. Maybe once you get to my age, you’re willing to hear it. It sneaks up on you and you hear it by accident, like a foghorn’s jolt. Don’t worry, younger ones. You’re not missing anything. It’s no poem for the ages. It’s only the fact of us. Maybe acceptance of non-poetic facts is the gift of age.

One day those facts might turn into a poem, though. I’ll let you know. Maybe I’ll write it.

In the meantime, I listened to the tiny spot on this planet surrounding me. I heard its shadowy trees guard over its buried pets, and its busy planes slice through chilly air, and I noticed how the moon watched over as a quiet guard, but also as a reminder. The finite within the infinite simplifies everything — weirdly.

I said, “Moon, you make the world feel manageable.”

“I try,” it whispered.

I went inside, hung up my coat, and made a cup of tea. I settled down and worked on writing. I thought of my struggles that day, but also my gifts. It was a good day as far as days go, and I had everything to be grateful for, but I don’t always think this way. Sometimes my mind goes infinite in its worry or wondering. Sometimes I compare the tiny to the endless and everything seems so complicated and unknowable.

Then I remembered the moon — a painting on rock that is only evident in light, much like my gifts. I might as well skew toward light if I have a choice — and I do.

A few days later, I woke up and left for my civil daylight walk, that precious half hour before sunrise. I looked up and saw the moon.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“What are you doing here?” it asked back. We smirked at each other. Silly moon.

I paused my walk, ran inside, and grabbed my binoculars. Back outside I sat on a chair on the patio and steadied my arms to see what I could see this time. The moon was in a waning gibbous phase, slowly disappearing for its future monthly new moon phase — that bummer of a day when there’s no moon, but not technically.

I could see all the jagged craters on the waning edge, and they stood out like a pox devastation. It was worse — a space debris impact devastation. Such violence the poor moon has suffered. The universe has no care.

I put away my binoculars and started my walk again, but just as I crested the rise in the shared road where I live, I could see the school bus start to roll away from the bus stop. My middle-school neighbor was off to his school day.

“Darn!” I thought. If I hadn’t had my head in the sky, I could have seen him and wished him a nice day at school. He and his sister are some of my delights.

And this is the trade-off — moon versus people. Head in the clouds versus head in the here and now. Both have their merit and sometimes the timing is just right, and you get the best of both — a balanced life.

I continued on my walk and took in my surroundings. Soon I’d have my head in my computer and then in meetings all day. Later that night, I walked with my son and we watched the moon continue to shrink. When we finished walking, my son went inside ahead of me as I paused at the door.

“You know I love you,” I whispered to the moon.

“I do,” it murmured back, half asleep. “I love you back.”

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Hope you're well, friends.