Project Luna
Apologies in advance my dear reader. This is a poorly-organised, selfish essay written by me, (mostly) for me as I try to unsatisfactorily explain why the moon captures me like so.
I think in order to present my case I must first ask you to look at the moon. I pray that there is a full moon tonight, although those are unreasonably rare (can you believe that in the span of an entire year we are met with but a dozen full moons?). The very fact that you can gaze at the moon is a marvel. As we know, not all astronomical bodies are quite so nice (think, for example, of the moon’s solar cousin). What’s more, it doesn’t greet us with the same face everyday. Instead, it goes through its phases in a pleasantly gentle cycle, unhurried in its passage through time. In a world and at a time when things happen at a dizzying pace (I refuse to acknowledge that I am already nearly done with my undergraduate career), this serves as a much needed reminder that not everything is rushing ahead. It is okay for me to take a few moments to just breathe and sit with our celestial companion.
The moon is an object so fundamental to our sky that we map its name to all analogous objects on other planets; they may all have moons, but none have the moon. I think one of my favourite facts about the moon is its lack of atmosphere and the permanence this produces. Footsteps made on the moon decades ago are still there and could remain there for millions of years, while here on Earth even the scars of great wars fade in but a century1. I cannot help but wonder whether or not it is better to have a persistent past for permanent reminders or a receding past to build upon.
The fact is I only fell in love with the moon recently. I have fond memories from my childhood, as I’m sure you do as well, of the moon following me around. Be it returning from late dinners with my parents, or going on a trip and refusing to sleep, or playing with friends deep into the night, the moon was a constant companion, but too quiet for it to be truly impactful on my child self. As I got older I got busier, or perhaps simply less attentive, the moon waned from my life. Luckily I was able to meet this patient old friend properly once again.
It was the first semester of my first year, when all classes were online. I was in Hong Kong at the time, which has a 12 hour time difference from Toronto (13 hours in the winter because of daylight savings time which we do not have time to get into. Suffice it to say, however, that of all the things I love, daylight savings time is not one of them). So to be able to attend synchronous lectures and such, I shifted my routine by 12 hours to sleep from noon till 7 or 8pm (I have been told this was not too far from a typical sleep schedule for students in Toronto as well) and effectively live according to the Toronto timezone .
As someone who strongly dislikes sleeping, or even taking naps, during the day, this was not an easy transition (I have no good justification for this preference. I just feel that if the sun is up, I should be too). And yet for all its inconveniences and downsides, I didn’t particularly mind the switch. There is a certain thrill to staying up all night. It’s amazing how quiet everything becomes. You can feel the city going to sleep around you. The lights come on all at once and then slowly dwindle over the course of the night. You wonder about the light that is up until 3 in the morning. You wonder how you appear to the person under that light. You get a glimpse of the places you thought you knew and find out how little you did.
I am by no means the first one to be fascinated by the moon. Lyrics.com brings up over 95,000 titles when I search the term. One of the key obsessions of the space race was to land on the moon2. Going further back, there are various cave paintings that depict the phases of the moon. There is belief that the Lascaux cave paintings, which are some 15000 years old, contain such depictions3. There is little evidence that this was anything more than a practical way of tracking the time, but I find it hard to believe that our ancestors weren’t at least somewhat mystified by the moon. If there is one thing we learn from history, it is that people are almost all the same (You might be astonished, for example, by how modern some ancient graffiti feels. Carved in the ruins of Pompeii is a statement which simply says “Lucius painted this”4. There is an inscription made in 1153 near the ceiling in some old ruins in Scotland that reads “Tholfir Kolbeinsson carved these runes high up”5,6).
I had gotten into the habit of traversing my house with the lights off. Partly because I wanted to be as silent as possible to let my family sleep (seriously why are light switches so loud). Partly for the fun of it: a demonstration to myself that I knew my surroundings so well that I could pass through them (effectively) blindfolded. And partly it was to show my 10-year-old self that I had conquered the ghosts that used to terrorise him in the darkness. An upsettingly easy task as I found that not only did I not believe in them anymore, but that I couldn’t believe in them. A reminder that, for better or worse, time has changed more than just my body. An even more acute reminder now as I sit here remembering my first year self.
It was one of these nights that I realised how bright the living room seemed. It wasn’t bright enough to be the ceiling lights but certainly bright enough to see everything clearly. As I stepped into the living room, I looked out the window to spot the source of the light: the full moon.
I am not quite sure how to explain the feeling of being mesmerised by something that had always been there. It was simply the moon after all. Yet I felt I had never seen it before. The first thing I noticed, I think, is how small the moon is. My childhood memories had embellished the moon significantly and it seems I hadn’t corrected things since. And yet the moon is also so incredibly bright. Did you know, dear reader, that the moonlight casts shadows? Maybe you did. Maybe you say it is obvious that any light source would cast shadows. But somehow in the 18 years of my life at the time, I had never thought to apply that statement to the moon. Besides, there is a difference between knowing something and seeing it. Lunar shadows are unlike any other. Shadows are defined by the absence of light but moonlight is so gentle that the absence and presence of light are difficult to distinguish. You could almost miss the shadows if you weren’t paying attention. But once you see them, they have an unmistakable presence. I suppose there is a reason Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 14 came to be called Moonlight Sonata (the melody I am listening to as I write this) [as a side note, the name Moonlight Sonata was only attributed to the piece years after Beethoven’s death. Its original name is Sonata quasi una fantasia (“sonata almost a fantasy”). At some point, someone associated the image of moonlight to the opening sequence and it resonated with enough people to become the face of the composition7).
I stood there for quite a while, barefoot on the balcony, simply looking out at the moon and everything surrounding me. It is hard for me to describe the calm and peace that the moon fills me with. It is wonderfully grounding to know that this object is there in the sky and has always been and always will be (as far as I am concerned). How could anything go wrong today, with the moon so beautiful?
1 https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2018/05/the-fading-battlefields-of-world-war-i/561353/
2 https://airandspace.si.edu/exhibitions/space-race/online/sec300/sec300.htm
3 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/975360.stm
4 https://www.pompeiiinpictures.com/pompeiiinpictures/r2/2%2002%2002%20p9.htm
5 https://www.pressreader.com/uk/the-herald-1130/20190413/282355451129649
6 https://www.orkneyjar.com/history/maeshowe/maeshrunes.htm
7 https://crumey.co.uk/beethoven_5_why_moonlight_sonata.html#moonlight