🌒

Sometimes, on quiet nights, I sit by my windowsill and watch the moon, waxing and waning.

🌓

Isn’t it wondrous, to see that pale orb trace the boundary of our world? Some nights the glow is silvery blue, silent and pure. Other times, it radiates a soft yellow, almost a gentle imitation of its brother. Regardless of its shape and colour, I watch it pass us by.

🌔

Isn’t it strange how long the moon has watched over us? The significance it has had on us humans? The pale traveller who watched over our nomadic hunter-gatherer ancestors. The mother who bears a child every month, governing the fertility of fallow fields bearing fruit. It mirrors the faces of those who observe it.

🌕

And as it watches us, we humans reciprocate in obsession. Artemis the moon-mad, driving maidens to wildness. Hecate the many-faced, wandering liminal boundaries. Khonshu the watcher, observing the wanderers of the night. Chang’e the tragic wife, an untouchable symbol of beauty and romance. Tsukuyomi-no-Mikoto the pure, governing celestial cycles and timekeeping. The lunacy of the lūna, as it were.

🌖

What enraptures us so much about the moon? Why do we proclaim its beauty and assign it gentle grace in contrast to its solar counterpart, who is defined by power and fierceness? Is the sun not an equal provider for the growth of food? Are our daily lives not conducted under the golden glow of the day? Why does it not occupy such a space as the moon? What romance does it lack, that we are not drawn to a soft pale blue canvas but a swathe of glittering dark velvet?

🌗

I know why it fascinates me. When I am tired of the hectic bustle of the day, I hide away and comfort myself with the silence of the night sky. Every night the moon passes by the busy lights of the skyscrapers, a constant in a life of chaos and anxiety. I breathe in starlight and I am at peace.

🌘

So sometimes, on quiet nights, I sit by my windowsill and watch the moon, waxing and waning.

🌑