Good Moon

In ancient civilizations, calendars were often lunar-based. I personally think this was an excellent idea--chronos time is a very flimsy thing, all based off our own perceptions with no sense of universal balance, odd and created just to have something. Why do we need atomic clocks? Time is really irrelevant if you have the proper paradigm, so let's go with the phases of the moon or whatever fancy takes you.

But then again, I always have had an...affinity...with the moon. It is my enemy, my ancient foe, my mirror that holds the key to unlocking my demons inside its thin smug smile. But someone once said: *"Sometimes old enemies fight so long that they become allies and never realize it. They think they strike at you, but they have become so closely linked it is as if yu guided the blow yourself," and I don't know if our relationship was like that or not. I don't know if I can respect it, because I fear it, but it is a thing of great buty. We are old enemies. Facing my fears, my inhumanities, my inner demons, at the beck and call of this ancient enemy as it waxes to full power.

But not tonight. Tonight, as my feet tread over frozen ground, the moon hangs, waning crescent, clear and golden as it sinks in a display of lunar splendor in the western sky. Numbly, I cross the rolling land, until my house disappears, until the world disappears and I am alone with the earth, the sky, and the moon. The grass barely comes to my knees, and I slow as I reach the middle of the field, cool night air caressing me. Alone again. Alone with me and the moon.

Lunar. They called people 'lunatics' because the full moon was supposed to inspire madness, crazy thinking, and, ironically, lunacy. Artemis, goddess of the moon and the hunt, riding the night and dispelling justice with her silver arrows, counterpart to Apollo her brother, the sun. Artemis does not favor me, for I am a lunatic, inspired lunacy, gone lunar every full moon. The silver circle is my bane, my curse, and I thought I had to embrace it. I cannot. I can accept it, I can endure it, the fact that it's impossible to cure. I can accept that fact that I can live, mostly, a normal life, but I cannot endorse, will not embrace this savage beast that kills and feasts, that lusts and hunts for human blood.

I sigh and smile bitterly as I sit in the grass, lying back on the cool sharp cushions, feeling the moon bathe me in light. You'd think by now I'd have learned better, that I'd have gotten over it, accepted it, moved on, but I haven't. It's probably a complex, a never-ending cycle that starts and stops here, at the moon. I stare at the moon, golden smile low in the western sky, and at the stars above me, and I don't feel anything.
Is this peace?

I stare a the golden mmoon, watching faint shadows of craters on its surface, the harvest crescent. It isn't like its sister; this moon is an older, wiser, version, golden with years and maturity, smiling with benevolence, low and touchable, gracious and forgiving. Maybe, someday, I will learn to accept it in its whole.

But tonight, it is a good moon. And that is all that matters.

With the same empty feeling of peace, I watch the moon until it slips soundlessly behind the horizon, and then I count all the stars, one by one.

Goodnight, moon.