There’s a moon out tonight

…Before a winter storm at night, clouds passed,
Filtering the full moons translucence,
Pushed by winds that touch the earth with chill,
Filling the night with expectancy…

From a poem I wrote in 1978

Ah, the moon! I was witness to the brilliance and majesty of a full moon as it moved in and out of clouds the other night. It was 3 am. I was sitting on my balcony looking up at the cloud-filled night sky, curiously bright because, as I had not realized, there was a full moon behind that gray, vaporous curtain, as well as stars. A few hours later there was to be a lunar eclipse, but I had forgotten about that, too.

I was staring up into slightly illuminated clouds, when in an instant, they parted, and where they opened, a brilliant two-sided white light appeared.

I had never seen anything like it. I was so shocked at the sight that I thought at first it might be a UFO. For a few potentially life-altering seconds, I had a flash of anxiety, but also intense excitement, as I thought perhaps this was it. After scanning the skies for so many decades, now might be the time I had a “close encounter of the third kind.” Maybe I’d be abducted. But I didn’t have much time for these strange and intoxicating thoughts to linger. It happened so quickly.

After a few more seconds, the clouds broke open to reveal the light for what it was: radiant beams from a full moon, now brilliantly white, like the most powerful spotlight one can imagine, yet despite the brilliance, you could look at it for long moments on awe and wonder.

The moon has that affect on me. I’ve always been drawn to a full moon. Years ago, I got in the habit one summer of driving to Folly Beach on many a night, walking out to the end of the pier to gaze at the moon in various phases over the ocean, casting its light across the water, creating a scene of mysterious, captivating wonder.

Here is what I wrote in a journal entry dated August 4, 2001:

The other night I ventured out to the Folly Beach Pier. It was a summer evening, a Friday, when the long and narrow deck, which stretched far out into the ocean, was alive with a ceaseless parade of humanity: couples arm-in-arm, families, children, grandchildren, teenagers in clusters, clumped together, walking slow, acting up, being young; a mother and daughter ( I am guessing), the mother in a wheelchair being pushed along the wooden planks, happy it seemed, when I looked at her, to be out on that beautiful ngiht. A father and mother, a 2 or 3-year-old child sitting atop his shoulders, bouncing along until they stop to greet a little white ball-of-fur-of-a-dog prancing daintily on that rough wooden boardwalk on a leash held by an exuberant-voiced man accompanied by two teenaged boys. They all stop — strangers in this tableaux — and I watch while the little girl greets and cuddles the winsome miniature dog and delights in the small crature’s immediate and happy fondness for her.

I stand alone against the railing, turned toward them, watching for moments on end until the two groups part and go their separate ways. Was this just a little toy show dog? They sneaked past the entrance to the pier and ignored, or didn’t notice, the sign that said no dogs or pets allowed. Who cared, anyway, they must have thought. This was no ordinary dog, just a little toy. Everyone would ooh and ahhh….So cute.

Then I turn and look at what has truly drawn me to this spot that night, a full moon, large and white and glowing with brilliant and startling incandescence. It is mesmerizing. Its reflection over the ocean makes the night seem friendly and warm, a companion, and the darkness that evening merely an abstraction along the borders of this moon-lit tableaux. Nothing to feel anxious about.

I continued to watch the moon, large, mysterious, sublime, impossible to even imagine were it not real. Are all the people passing me by on the pier similarly gazing at that spectacle in the sky? I think not. I didn’t see anyone else around me remotely interested in what I saw, except for one man on the opposite side of the pier, looking skyward. How strange it would be if everyone at the same time was gazing at the white orb looking down at them beneficently? How truely odd. I imagine it now. But I needn’t worry. It would take a moving light in the sky, an unexplained phenomenon, some UFO, to draw all those eyes skyward, in unison in fear and amazement, terrified even, or stunned by the sheer magnitude of encountering some possible visitor from outer space.

But until that happens, and I don’t imagine it ever will, I think I’ll be content to just look at the moon. For when I look long enough, it transforms itself into some kind of mystifying and unknown object, a source of light and wonder from afar that is never so famiiar to me that I cannot look at it with new eyes if I want to.

I wanted to leave, and yet I didn’t. Loneliness was wrapped around me on that clear night. The sea breeze was steady from the south, a constant reminder that I was next to the ocean. I looked again at the moon. Transparent clouds were racing by. They framed that warm, white ball of light in some kind of surrealist painting against a dark backdrop of the night sky. Clear again and free. Into the clouds and out. That beam of light guided my eyes upward and out to sea taking me away from the crowds and the articial light and the nosie from the nearby se afood restaurant, crowded with late-night diners. How can one possibly be alone with the moon for company?

I went back and accessed the archive of my online journal at Open Diary, searching with one simple keyword: “moon.” Here are some passages culled from a dozen or so years of my journal:

And the moon is often most beautiful on a cloudy night, I think!

Unknown author

The changing of sunlight to moonlight
Reflections of my life
Oh, how they fill my eyes
The 5(greetings of people in trouble
Reflections of my life
Oh, how they fill my eyes

“Reflections of my life”
Dean Young of the group “The Marmalade”

Just a couple of weeks ago, I was sitting by the ocean at the end of a hot summer day, sun having set and a magnificent full moon illuminating the ocean in front of me.  I was lulled and calmed by the peaceful thoughts that such a night on the beach bring, so far away from the cares of the world next to the immensity of moon and sea.

Journal: Sept. 20, 2008

Nearby I could hear the sounds of Andy Williams’ classic “Moon River.” That song always brings back memories. Usually, I just hear birds and the wind in the trees. But soon, the band started and I was listening to a version of Norah Jones’ Come Away with Me. A couple and their two small daughters passed in front of me. I was lost in my own reveries, the air was so pleasant, almost cool, the sky a radiant blue, the sunlight yellow gold between the shadows of the oaks. Time stood still for awhile, as I like it to do, but soon I was gathering my stuff and heading off around the bend in the trail to the marshes and salt grass, now at low tide. My pace had slowed.. I was walking along the marsh, in the shadow and shade of trees, wishing I didn’t have to leave. A golden time.

Journal: May 18, 2007

…I’m going to get back there, [to New Orleans, my hometown] before too much longer, for a visit. I’ll take the streetcar up St. Charles to Carrollton. I’ll walk down Decatur Street in the Quarter and to to the Moon Walk where I’ll look out over the Mississippi to the other bank and old Algiers where I went to high school. I’ll probably get an oyster po-boy and drive to the lakefront and come back down Elysian Fields Avenue, stopping at a McKenzie’s Pastry Shop for a butterfly roll (cinnamon with raisin roll)

Journal: Nov. 25,2005

Then the moon begins its climin’ an’ the stars shine overhead
An’ the mother calls the children an’ she takes ’em up to bed.
An’ I smoke my pipe in silence an’ I think o’ many things,
An’ balance up my riches with the lonesomeness o’ kings,
An’ I come to this conclusion, an’ I’ll wager that I’m right —
That I’m happier than they are, sittin’ on my porch at night…

The Front Porch
by Edgar Guest

Last night I stayed out until just past dark, watching the stars appear and the few fleecy clouds light up with that very special bright, end-of-sunset glow. As the sky darkened, a magnificent half moon radiated light like a lantern directly above me in the sky. Oftentimes a full moon rises directly in front of me over the ocean, casting long, silvery strands of light across the waves and the surface of the ocean, far off to the horizon.

The moon in all its phases is so mysterious and beautiful, especially when it shines over the ocean and night is falling. Lovely.

Journal: July 12, 2004

Oh gentle Moon, the voice of thy delight
falls on me like thy clear and tender light
soothing the seaman, borne the summer night, 
through isles forever calm;
Oh gentle Moon, thy cystal accents pierce
the caverns of my pride’s deep universe,
charming the tiger joy, whose tramplings fierce
made wounds which need thy balm…

From “Prometheus Unbound” by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Quoted in my Journal, July 12, 2004

…With the windows in the car down the other night under a moonlit sky that was still dark, air rushing in and feeling so good, I suddenly had this very powerful feeling. I somehow reached deep down into some place within my innermost being where I discovered my longings for home were fulfilled. It was just something I knew at that moment. I felt that mysterious “sense of place” so completely and totally that I could not imagine living, or even existing anywhere other than Charleston…

Journal: June 4, 2004

Late the other night I walked to the laundromat and stood under a half moon looking at new leaves on a pear tree. Pale moonlight cast a dull shine on the leaves. It was a most lovely evening in spring. In the near distance, bright pink azalea blooms were invisible.

Journal: March 31, 2004

…My friend and his family live in a little tiny valley tucked away in the north Georgia mountains, down a dirt and gravel road that winds past a few other houses and ends at the base of a small mountain or hill — I don’t know what you call it — down which a creek flows past the edge of their four-acre property. A deck overlooks Brasstown Bald, the highest mountain in Georgia, and it was there that we’d spend hours at night sitting with our feet propped up again the railing, looking at the stars and moon and fireflys flickering on and off in the distance. And talking. We did a lot of that. All this occurred during my vacation visit up there earlier this month…

Journal: June 25, 2003

Clouds can obscure the moon, but they cannot change it or affect its inherent nature. Likewise, our mind is often clouded by delusions, yet our true mind, our true essence, remains unaffected.
Taro Gold

Quoted in my Journal: Jan. 17, 2003

Then I come across those reminders of past trips, and I discover anew why I take those walks in the woods and why I am drawn with reverence and awe to a glowing full moon over the ocean at Folly Beach. Such are the mysteries of the natural world that to begin to comprehend them, we must attempt to become the wind, the birds, the clouds, the moon. It sounds fanciful, impossible, a bit too mystical. But, we are part of it all, this mind-expanding universe whose portals open up all around us as we look up in the sky or down a path in the woods to that point where it bends and disappears.

Journal: Aug. 21, 2002

And I sit awhile and notice fewer and fewer people until they are all gone and night settles over the beach and a silver moon lights the way back.

Journal: Aug. 16, 2002

Afterwards, we talked until late out on the deck overlooking the mountain and a full moon, shining brightly beneath a tall hickory tree.

Journal: June 3, 2002

…Last night we sat out talking in the cool mountain air — about 60 degrees — with a near full moon over the mountains to the south and fireflies flickering about in the darkness. I’m told they fill the air on summer nights here with their thin little body lanterns flashing on and off. Fascinating and magical. I love to see fireflies.

Journal: June 2, 2002