If the Earth is a hotel room and humans are the rockers who trashed it, the Moon regrets that cosmic management has not procured the imprint of a mortal credit card. The Moon and its subsidiaries are taking a look at the Moon’s own violent creation. Of particular concern is the lunar fission theory, which suggests the Moon was spun out of the Earth like rock salt or candy. The Earth’s defense rests on the fact that the Moon only got to be the Moon by smashing into the Earth. This is how we get made, too—some of us—by the smashing together of bodies in bliss sometimes mistaken for violence, or violence sometimes mistaken for bliss. This leads us to music, the music of the spheres, celestial bodies playing air guitar. The Moon has been known to strum the ocean like a mandolin, each wave and crest a chord, the sea’s full belly undulating as humans rock and roll, port and starboard—so much of this life a game of balancing between extremes. This leads us to “Blue Moon,” “Moon River,” “Fly Me to the Moon,” and “Bad Moon Rising.” Crooners release helium balloons made in the Moon’s image—almost, not quite. The Moon has a style that is hard to approximate, even when we are in love. The Moon has no weather to speak of, no wind or rain to erode those craters or rocks or dust—and yet here we are projecting like crazy, which brings me to madness and lunacy: the man in the Moon and the woman beside him, just shy of the light, darning his gauzy white scarf, damning his hot-and-cold heart. How can we resist jumping on rented beds, setting fire to the curtains like F. Scott and Zelda? How can we resist leaping from the balcony, like Cynthia or Selene, and cooling off in that Blue Moon of a hotel pool?
- Two Poems - May 26, 2016
- Why the Moon Matters - December 5, 2013
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