Finding the Moon

First Published December 19th, 2021 - revised version

(written December 18th '21 the night of the December full moon)

i love the snow and you could almost hear the soft chiming of sleigh bell tucked between the falling snowflakes in the night. but tonight i do not love the snow and this is because i cannot see the sky. and therefore i cannot find the moon.

i cannot find the full moon, that peaked in its phase not 20 minutes ago, now hiding behind the dreary denim of the sky, that i walk seeking in perhaps vain. the moon, that i leave the house seeking, door still open, slipping on the icy stairs (that i can't see for the fresh snow covering them) and falling, whacking the back of my head on a stair and not even mad. i can't complain, it's the full moon and everything goes and everything happens for a reason. if only for tonight.

i have come out to let the moonlight fuck with me and mingle with my hair and my heart. wake me up hard if you have to, moon, i was probably thinking wrong before-hand.

though normally i drop out of the school of hard knocks. and will keep rejecting their invitations. when and if ever they come. i like a smooth sailing kind of ride, but tonight i am a witch who will trudge through bramble and mud towards salvation, who recently drew medicine wheels with her blood in the white forest snow. and in this way learns east from west. do not fuck with her unless you are the elementals who really do know better.

i hit my head and surrender, lay in the driveway on a soft carpet of snow a minute, letting the haze of the sky wrap me in my own haze and wonder. then i lock the door and am off to frolic in the forest, or towards it rather, hot chocolate on the stove. short stroll. i live right near the forest but it isn't as totally idyllic as it can sound. first i must pass the gas station. and the fire station and the slightly haunted abandoned houses. and then we are home-free (by the forest path entrance, next to the sleepy midnight highway). yet once there i only wish to return to the house.

i turn to see my footprints revealing too much about my intentions and whereabouts. but the snow is a friend, gently and surely covering my tracks. doing so in almost the same way the passage of time can bury stories without any force, but only through its steady and soft movement onward, the layers of the earth building to cover old lives, old worlds.

i may not have seen the moon but this snow has, being born of the high clouds. i look to my coat and admire the first snowflake i really notice of the season, a tiny gleaming geometry of a star. remembering when once upon a time i blessed the snowflakes of Montreal, intending that the snowflakes bless those they land upon. and ripple. and ripple, the blessings, the love.

really, little things do not exist. (all is the size of our best intentions.) a little snowflake can change the world. not that i will wait for that.

this full moon and sun sit parallel to the galactic plane (facing the milky way center at 26° Sagittarius) and i find myself thinking about my plans in the world. there's the voice that appears, every so often, reminding me to dream biggest, to take the leap, to start that spaceship company.

i will make my life a testament to dreaming biggest, to taking the quantum leaps. even if it terrifies me. even if i seem absolutely crazy to everyone around me for a prolonged moment. caring how i seem is a luxury i could not afford. if i indulged in it i would never succeed.

i am only finishing a novel now, a tiny project to my greater self maybe, relative to what she craves, feeding courage into myself by pretending there are far bigger monsters in the universe to fry than the giant ones i deal with daily. actually, finishing the book has taken 15 years and this is only the rough draft. its not a small deal at all. but i play with that higher self and let her pump me up for greater challenges, to shift the emotional charge to some far-off post, and make this one easier to pummel through. like its not a deal. i'm tricking myself into greatness. if i thought it was mammoth maybe i wouldn't go. even if it might actually be mammoth.

come to perceive your vocational struggles as no big deals. but really, do get on that spaceship business. it's far more relevant and important than you know.

thinking about that brings me to thinking about the spaceships already here, the ones i want nothing more than to hitchhike (these days). i'm hardly even afraid anymore. are y'all into divine service, roaming extraterrestrials? if you are, we'll know. if you are, take me with you, or rather, take me somewhere new. i know it happens to some people. can it happen to me? (and should it?)

what is more likely is we begin to gather and initiate sincere contact protocols. this is a serious thing, that is starting to feel important. i hesitate to share about on the open internet. there are (...ahem, government) groups that can really dislike when people do this, and they take it very seriously. and then there's that whole electric fence of social stigma that exists to deal with stray thinkers and wonderers, so that none dare wonder or wander too far from this (open) cage of consciousness.

personally, i'd encourage everybody to (test the outer limits). the sting is only a second compared to the delicious freedom of thinking independently of any need to belong. which leads different people to different ideas and discoveries. there is little homogeneity in this wild of thought, but the ones exploring it tend to have a similar spirit - and there's this beauty of mutual recognition when one encounters another.

contact missions. no big deal? also, the current societal challenges. tiny fish. it can get a lot worse in 340 years in new bad ways, another voice says to me. be grateful for all perspectives of today, and what they are standing for. do not polarize. for someday, you will stand on the other side of perspective, grateful to those who seem to be tyrannical to you today. balance is a key here. so is mental health. mental health might be the key here.

really, immortality and agelessness is what i'm after, and i can't yet imagine how it's going to be like when that hits the political arena. but i am very aware it will and will be an immense deal. i am aiming to do unthinkable things with my body so naturally i just want to be left alone right now. i'm already running my own experiments with my living foods diet, and the way i speak with my body, and make choices based on direct somatic input.

my body has spoken and has set limits. the body itself has agency; personhood, intelligence and a voice, is a non-societal self, an ecological self in our sovereign care. i am her servant, first. i am heated up to think about this all and i stop for now. i write many things and I erase them because they are too abstract, polarizing, and they are not about the moon.

i continue my walk, still no moon, just the chorus of snow, everywhere and lush and singing about the winter. the night is quiet. it's this sleepy town; i only hear the distant howling wind over the mountains, and the slapping of tiny snowflakes on my coat.

i walk back the same way i came, seeing my path waving like a snake, reminding me of the amazonian Nazca lines.

who walks like this? i think.

a car passes and i remember that soon i too will ride Metal Horse fast into the horizon. now, i am intimate with the dazzling Evening Gown of winter, a thousand miles long. i am admiring the details.

i try to walk in such a way that draws a double helix with my previous steps. but it does not exactly look that way. i try to walk in such a way that is the other half of the wave. filling in the gaps in thought there, where I went blank-mind on the path.

does snow ever betray the one walking, and has it ever? has it ever revealed steps that would better have been hidden? i don't want to think about that story; to imagine that into the world. snow is forever a friend. water that dares to take shape, she will reveal and hide what must be revealed or hidden. for in her fluid state she has already seen all. and now knows what must yield, and what must be seen and known.

finally i find the moon. gleaming like the night's shy bindi, flashing in and out of visibility. she appears when i am nearly back where i started, at my house. playing with me, hide and seek. i soak in the sparse moonlight and revel in her quiet majesty.

the snow continues to fall, covering my footsteps. it is my wish that what is covered is not erased, but rather cleared away, like mad scribbles on the chalkboard, because it was listened to and taken note of, and now the page turns again, so something new can be written.

(TL;DR - i walked towards the forest and then back to my house on the night of a full moon)