Wide Awake, Crescent-Shaped

I see the moon and the moon sees me
High up over the apple tree


I can still hear my mom and dad singing this to me,* and with it that vague, buttery feeling that all little kids should have that everything is good and everything is connected. Like, if you can see the man in the moon (and yes, you want to see him so bad when you're 3, so you do), you're pretty much set.

Here in New York City, I'm embarrassed to say I don't even know if the moon is supposed to be visible to telescope-less eyes every night.  It's like that in many other urban areas, where most of the time you can't see stars because of light pollution. The glare and clutter from street lamps and lights in and outside office buildings spills into the sky like frat boys at Santacon, peeing in the street and such.

It's not just that we can't see the night sky. it's that as a result, I think we're out of whack, oversolared and overexposed.  If you're like me, you'll feel especially overstimulated in summer, when the sun is biggest and loudest. A real scheister who won't get off the stage until gravity forces its departure, the Donald Trump of things-in-the-sky (HELLO, you shouldn't look at him directly either). Even the sidewalks glare at you, and riding the subway is like licking a moist underarm (Eeww! Sorry).

Fortunately, there is hope--and it's made of green cheese. Okay, it's actually more like rocks, but Ayurvedic experts and others recommend moonbathing as cooling and calming, a way to balance the sun's yang energy with some loony (as in lunar) yin. I found a blog post on this practice that blows my mind (and P.S. if you wanna dig a little deeper you can find the author's body and spirit analysis of various world leaders).

So this past summer I started watching the sky in earnest. At first, it was like some bad crush, with me practically salivating as  I'd catch a glimpse of the moon over the East River. I'd be close to panting as I'd get off the bus and throw my groceries or bag upstairs and run outside again, only to find the ghost of my beloved taunting me from behind a pack of dirty-tricking clouds. Some nights it would seem like the moon was tracking a cubist path, now a cut-out hanging atop a tree with Scotch tape, then minutes later a papery disc holy communioned between two apartment buildings.

But slowly, somehow my aim just got better, and me and the moon had some quality time. In Texas in September, she (she? Yeah, she's a she for sure in Texas) acted as a tour guide for a leg of our sunset cruise around Austin's Ladybird Lake, as a million bats emerged like butterfly shadows to greet her.

And these past few days, whoa…it's like the moon's on 'roids, swinging big and low and bulbous, precisely timing orbit and phase in order to be his biggest self. (Yeah, this Supermoon's a total shock jock). On Sunday night I turned off all the lights, opened the windows and did my before-bed meditating while gazing at the moon; I'd close my eyes and see the Kodachrome version like a glowy doorbell on my third eye, then woke up the next morning thinking, The moon is a prodigal sun.

On Monday night I had to lie on the living room floor to get a good view, Ira looming over me from the coffee table, a la Supermoon, Siamese Cat edition. I'd close my eyes and see the moon waning into tomorrows, then woke up this morning and knew, Love is the moon looking at the sun. Or, love is that which flows between the moon and the ocean.

I also knew, like it or not, this is the story I have already been and have to start telling over and over, no matter that others have already told it better, no matter what a crappy or not job I do of it. I tell mine with cats and girls, and moms and brothers, and sacred beings and freshwater pearls. I wish it were a little easier to tell, like the story of the first kitten to do a pirouette (that's still on my list!), but it's kinda the one thing that explains everything to me.

Love is the moon thinking about the sun.




* I didn't realize until this writing it's an actual song! One of family members must have changed the words from "down through the leaves of the old oak tree" to "high up over the apple tree," in homage to the tree outside my window. To this day no Macintosh has been able to raise the bar set by this tree.

And then there's this.





While writing this, my inner juke box cued up  and busted out "Sunrise, Sunset," and  I'm in the backseat of my family's light blue Caprice Classic again, forced to listen to this borderline creepy and way-too-depressing-for-a-kid song--sorry, Tony!--on 8-track.