Pull of the Moon
I had to share something I found in the text books my Physics teacher wrote for our Physics class:
“The modern world is moonblind. Outside our walls and windowshades the same silvery moon shines. But in the house-habit of the modern age, we no longer see the world in moonlight. The glare of streetlights and the dust pollution veil the night sky. The ringing telephones, the mutter of prowling automobiles, and the errands of an interlocked humanity turn our eyes away from the heavens. Our age favors precision, narrow calibration, gridwork dependency, the kind of discrimination we perfect in daylight. Though humans have walked on the moon and science has published its secrets, we know it less. Few of us know what time the moon will rise tonight.
So it shocks us all the more when the moon takes hold of our minds.
On a crisp, clear November night in California’s Sierra Nevada, the light of the full moon overhead shimmered on the silvery granite. The night seemed charged with prankish electricity. I began to stroll in the inviting light. On a broad, steep hillside, I suddenly found myself running. Heedless of loose rocks underfoot, I bounded down the slope, blind from the knees up, a fortunate fool, illuminated - if at all - from within. Tree brances brushed by. Stones flew. But I did not fall. And when I reached the bottom of the slope and emerged from this breathless immersion in the strange liquid of the moonlight, I was astonished at what had stolen over me. And I felt euphoric, cleansed of time and place and the worry of judgement.
We talk disparagingly of people who are moonstruck. But I suspect those whose minds are nudged by the moon overhead, who walk in their sleep, or simply grow a little restless, are responding to the ancient music of the moon and tides within us all. We are not yet purged by modernity of our inner music and feelings. And the conflict between hard purpose and honest feeling is what makes lunatics of us all. We may rise on moonlit nights to find the confusions of the city melted away, and an older and simpler nature open to us. Moonlight may restore in us a stillness we have lost. It may join our hearts and minds before the great riddles and vast silences, and lead us to an older sense of peace and joy.”
- Michael Moran; Loving Earth Book II
“The modern world is moonblind. Outside our walls and windowshades the same silvery moon shines. But in the house-habit of the modern age, we no longer see the world in moonlight. The glare of streetlights and the dust pollution veil the night sky. The ringing telephones, the mutter of prowling automobiles, and the errands of an interlocked humanity turn our eyes away from the heavens. Our age favors precision, narrow calibration, gridwork dependency, the kind of discrimination we perfect in daylight. Though humans have walked on the moon and science has published its secrets, we know it less. Few of us know what time the moon will rise tonight.
So it shocks us all the more when the moon takes hold of our minds.
On a crisp, clear November night in California’s Sierra Nevada, the light of the full moon overhead shimmered on the silvery granite. The night seemed charged with prankish electricity. I began to stroll in the inviting light. On a broad, steep hillside, I suddenly found myself running. Heedless of loose rocks underfoot, I bounded down the slope, blind from the knees up, a fortunate fool, illuminated - if at all - from within. Tree brances brushed by. Stones flew. But I did not fall. And when I reached the bottom of the slope and emerged from this breathless immersion in the strange liquid of the moonlight, I was astonished at what had stolen over me. And I felt euphoric, cleansed of time and place and the worry of judgement.
We talk disparagingly of people who are moonstruck. But I suspect those whose minds are nudged by the moon overhead, who walk in their sleep, or simply grow a little restless, are responding to the ancient music of the moon and tides within us all. We are not yet purged by modernity of our inner music and feelings. And the conflict between hard purpose and honest feeling is what makes lunatics of us all. We may rise on moonlit nights to find the confusions of the city melted away, and an older and simpler nature open to us. Moonlight may restore in us a stillness we have lost. It may join our hearts and minds before the great riddles and vast silences, and lead us to an older sense of peace and joy.”
- Michael Moran; Loving Earth Book II