Life is totally complicated, and trying to understand it takes a lot of work. At unexpected moments during that work, you might be looking at something and suddenly everything will "line up." This is a story, published Thursday, Jan. 10, 1990, about one of those moments that, for me, arrived on the evening of Jan. 8.
Looking at the moon Tuesday night, I felt a sudden awareness of betrayal. Oh, the moon was innocent, pretty as ever in its full phase and unusually high in the sky for the 8 p.m. hour. It seemed to be in the company of a star or bright planet that had appeared to keep its relative position (a finger’s width to the south) since nightfall. They might have been two different stars, of course, but that would not be the romantic notion.
Through the years, I put a lot of stock in that moon to do my romancing for me. Most people have. For reasons of their own – and every human on the planet comes as a complete set of reasons of his or her own – people don’t trust themselves to get the job done.
A few people admit that, but it takes enormous courage. You confess your fears – be yourself in other words – and take your chances. Most people won’t go that far. They don’t want to take a chance; they want to get the girl. So even if they could, they won’t present themselves directly. They send what lovers have in common: the moon, the stars, the sky, the sun, the clouds, rain, the ocean, music, champagne, roses and Baby Ruths. It seems very romantic, but romance with the moon as intermediary is mostly an exercise in managing fear.
It would be funny if it weren’t also sad. Those who were doing their first romancing in the 1950s will remember the late, great Tommy Edwards, singing “Please Mr. Sun.” It sounded romantic at the time, but here was a man scared out of his mind. He begged brooks, wind, raindrops, rainbows and moonbeams, among others, to do his romancing for him, with Mr. Sun watching to see they all did. Some of us did Tommy one better. We took all his stuff, and the song, and sent it along as our personal John Alden. It’s amazing, the binding power we give to simple songs. I doubt that my high school girlfriend and I will ever speak again, but neither of us is likely to hear (I am blushing now) “Susie Darlin’” without feeling emotion for days and nights of long ago.
Chris Isaak, singing in the late 1980s, more or less put his finger on it: “Strange, what desire makes foolish people do.” It makes them bay at the moon for one thing. That night, head thrown back, face turned up to the moon, I was a person very much in the baying position. It was the same position foolish people everywhere assume, beaming the most heartfelt romantic thoughts at the moon as if it were a satellite that would bounce them back, across miles and darkness, into the heart of the intended, who would hear, and stop eating, or wake up, or push herself out of the arms of another man, who had naturally brought roses and champagne.
I turned around and looked at my shadow on the driveway and laughed. Then I stared at the moon again and for the first time saw it simply staring back, powerless to commune with anyone but me. I was the betrayer. And the betrayed was time, amounting to years and decades, time on both sides, lost to foolishness, left for fools to measure, in remembered melodies and spent corks and crumbled petals, by the forgiving light of the moon.
For the moment I was angry. But it was a beautiful night, clear and warm and unexacting. The moon moved on, just out of Orion’s reach. I stayed out awhile, wondering how beauty is shared, among fearless lovers.
The next morning I went out to start the car to take my son to school. It was 6:15, and the moon was just setting, in the north-northwest, in the same place the sun would set if it were June, near the solstice. The moon was as gold as a setting sun, and puddled the same way at the horizon. I watched it until it was gone, thinking how romantic it was, or maybe just very personal, that the moon should set at the dawn of this particular day.
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