Moon

Tonight the sky will darken and no moon will appear. We call it the new moon - another paradox.
The moon is new when it cannot be seen and old when it is fully visible. Summer comes when the days begin to shorten and the earth turns another face toward the sun.

I think it is possible that astrologers, like the writers of scripture, were trying to give humanity the benefit of their observations of metaphor as they resonate throughout our own little lives. The moon becomes new when it is unknown, dimmed, least present. The warmth of the sun floods our part of the earth in its wake. When these things are most focused on us, we feel their effects the least.

Seems to be the way with economics as well. Here we are, in the depths of an economic crisis and it is at this point that things begin to flutter back to life. However, so far all we see is damage just as all we saw was abundance when our resources were being plundered.

We make images of the things that have passed away in the form of poems or pictures, understanding them better in their absence than we did when they were here.

Is this why the philosopher said we cannot understand if we have been happy until our lives are over? Maybe it's why happiness is so hard to grasp even when we are in the midst of it.

I spend too much time looking out the window. Sometimes I am "working" when I do it - formulating thoughts, working out things I am writing at the time, but just as often I am waiting for some promised moment of happiness to arrive or watching the sunset and thinking about life or noticing the moon. These are, however, the moments I use to anchor myself when people around me, many of whom have not looked up or out for weeks at a time, are whirling, ever deeper into self-constructed disaster scenarios.

In that way, the light of those sunsets, those moonlit landscapes, illuminates and sustains rational thought in otherwise irrational moments. When the thing itself has passed away it lives within us in newer, stronger, more readily apparent ways.

Welcome moon. You have your home in me. And although I will look for your silver face in my window and wish to see more of you, I will also try to remember you are most present when away.

We know through memory, reflection
we read by moonlight
the glimmer within.