#168: For the love of the Moon

Dear reader,

I send you this edition full of lunar poetry on a sunny Monday morning. Did you look at the full moon a few days ago? It stirred something in me. I love the moon’s gentle shine, how she plays hide and seek with me through the clouds.

On most evenings, I spend time looking up at the sky. It brings me a sense of utter calm, a feeling that seems amiss from my life of late. Do you look up often? Do you see animals in passing clouds?

GIF by rheabambulu

Some comforting words on the moon:

“The moon is a loyal companion. It never leaves. It’s always there, watching, steadfast, knowing us in our light and dark moments, changing forever just as we do. Every day it’s a different version of itself. Sometimes weak and wan, sometimes strong and full of light. The moon understands what it means to be human. Uncertain. Alone. Cratered by imperfections.”
– Tahereh Mafi

I invite you to look up tonight and spent some time soaking up the moonshine.
In the meantime, enjoy these lovely moon poems I’ve picked for you:

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POETRY CORNER

Photograph by Samantha Muljat

1. An Inventory of Moons by David Shumate
   
   If you live to be very old, you may see twelve hundred full moons.Some come in winter and you trudge out into the deep snow tostand beneath their glow. Others come to you in the city and youtake an elevator up to the roof of the highest building and set outa couple of folding chairs to watch it glide across the sky. Or themoon finds you along a foreign shore and you paddle out in somedingy and scoop its reflection from the waters and drink it down.The moons of your old age are the most potent but seem few andfar between. They make their way into your marrow and teach ithow to hum. When your final moon arrives, it’s as if youth hascome back to you. Though instead of flaunting its yellow hat, nowit’s dressed in black.
   

2. Equations by Karen Volkman
   
   The moon isn’t looking for solutions.
   She’s grown accustomed
   to partialities,
   
   that accretion
   of absence, her black scarves
   plucked from the top hat
   
   one by one.
   Then a miraculous
   cumulus, removeless
   
   completion.
   Stoic mathematician,
   efficient wizard,
   
   reveal your secrets.
   A lover
   is going, some lover is always
   
   going. Such curious
   quadratics that
   will not leave me whole.
   

3. The Moon by Jorge Luis Borges
   Translated from the Spanish by Robert Mezey
   to María Kodama
   
   There is so much loneliness in that gold.
   The moon of every night is not the moon
   That the first Adam saw.
   The centuries
   Of human wakefulness have left it brimming
   With ancient tears. Look at it. It is your mirror.
   

4. Moon by Gregory Orr
   
   Has the moon been up there
   All these nights
   And I never noticed?
   
   A whole week with my nose
   To the ground, to the grind.
   
   And the beloved faithfully
   Returning each evening
   As the moon.
   
   Where have I been?
   Who has abandoned whom?
   

5. I Swallowed a Moon Made of Iron by Xu Lizhi
   
   I swallowed a moon made of iron
   They refer to it as a nail
   I swallowed this industrial sewage, these unemployment documents
   Youth stooped at machines die before their time
   I swallowed the hustle and the destitution
   Swallowed pedestrian bridges, life covered in rust
   I can't swallow any more
   All that I've swallowed is now gushing out of my throat
   Unfurling on the land of my ancestors
   Into a disgraceful poem.
   

6. Kid This Is October by Jeffrey Bean

   you can make the maples blaze
   just by stopping to look,
   you can set your clock to the barks
   of geese. Somewhere the grandfathers
   who own this town lean down to iron
   crisp blue shirts, their faces bathing
   in steam, and blackbirds
   clamor in packs,
   make plans behind corn.
   
   You know this,
   you were born whistling
   at crackling stars, you snap
   your fingers and big turtles
   slide out of rivers to answer.
   
   You can swim one more time
   in the puddle of sun
   in your water glass, taste icicles
   already in the white crunch
   of your lunch apple. Go
   to sleep. I’ll put on my silver suit
   and chase the sky into the moon.

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RECOMMENDED LISTENING

Such a refreshing album cover! via

• Too Young To Quit - Good Morning (+ their entire new album Barnyard)

• Shade - Grouper

• Homo Sapien - Parquet Courts (The new album Sympathy for Life is amaze)

• Is It Time To Eat The Rich Yet? - The F16s (Fave: Sucks To Be Human)

• Brené Brown with Brett Goldstein on Comedy, Creativity, and Roy Kent

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LINKS OF THE WEEK

Collaboration by Ava Roth and bees (via)

• Artist Ava Roth offers her work to bees for an unlikely creative collaboration

• A Mesmerizing, Meticulous Map of the Met

• At the Annual Roadworks Festival, a 7-Ton Steamroller Prints Linocuts in San Francisco’s Streets 

• There's a Ghost in this House by Oliver Jeffers

• Kat's Kable #252 - Cat's Special + Photographs of the shop cats of China

• What I Learned About My Writing By Seeing Only The Punctuation

• Treated myself to a Sunset Projection Spot Lamp

• Why Short-Term Solitude Makes You a Better Thinker (Sharing because it's true)

• The First Photograph in History

• Simon Weisse, the artist responsible for many of Wes Anderson’s spectacular miniature models

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I shared this on Instagram recently but since Halloween’s round the corner + because Ted Lasso is the best show I’ve seen in years, I had to share it here as well:

Smells like potential!

Happy Monday,
Rohini

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