Usually I’m not receptive to those things: astrology, mind control, faith healing, whatever. And I know that just by grouping them together that way, I’m showing my narrow mind, my ignorance. But it’s this very skepticism which makes the effects I’ve felt from the full moon so astonishing. I want to know more. In relating my experiences, I am asking for full moon stories from others.
For the past few years especially, I’ve noticed that on nights of a full moon, I awaken in the early morning hours and stay awake until dawn. Sometimes the effect is more dramatic. About a year ago, I went to bed about midnight, unaware of that night’s sky, and about 2:00 a.m. zoomed from sleep to alertness and jumped out of bed.
I remember turning on the light and pacing back and forth in my bedroom, cold and tired, too restless to sleep. Wine would knock me out, I thought, aware that I needed to get an early start the coming day, lots to do. Enroute to the wine bottle, I turned instead to the front door and opened it wide against any icy thrust of air, and I found myself staring at a remarkable moon, full, pulsating, about three-fourths [of the] way across the sky, directly above the tall pines in my front yard.
And then recently, on another full moon night, I dreamt about going outside to walk under a cold white light, the moon. When I opened my eyes, the room was dark, the drapes were drawn, and I was facing the wall. I tried to return to the dream, to sleep. No luck. Annoyed, I decided to get up. Usually if I get up in the night, I put on my bedroom slippers first thing. A basement apartment is heaven for crawlers, and I never walk barefoot on the bare floor without first turning on a light. But this time I walked straight to the window, barefoot in the night, and pulled back the drapes. There above me was the same moon as the year before — I mean, it was in the same place above the tall pines, and just as glowing, as perfect. Hurrying to the front door, I saw from there that it was indeed a re-enactment, a deja vu. The January air. Bare feet. For the first time, I wondered about the power of the moon, that at certain times, in certain ways, it would call me from my bed.
It’s easier for us to ignore it, to try to continue as we are, doing what we do, without butting our heads against these enigmas. But still we wonder.
I’d like to hear from your readers.
(Address responses to Jennifer in care of The Sun.)
Reading through my letter [The Sun, October, 1977], I see I was (am) just a bitter old fart, grumbling because the world never got around to having any use for my poetry, my teaching. Futile endeavor. To be sure, a scattered band had some use for me, but alas, nothing likely to do me any good. I guess to them I was their own modern Frank Villon, stumbling around in the gutter. Some of them, I think were genuinely fond of me, would even read the poems, though those were mostly just “credentials.” Mainly, though, they were waiting, y’see, for me to fall — then, they could get really indignant at the “establishment.” Or whatever. And I kept rain’ at ’em, y’see, howling about it bein’ a question of focus. Hell, it was just a question of what they wanted. Who the Hell wants poetry, eh?
So, when the energy went, the howling became grumbling. Y’know, during my career (sic!) as poet, I wrote probably more’n 10,000 pages (single spaced, typed) of “letter.” So, when I absolutely quit writing, period, probably a hundred pages or so of the grumble Judy passed to you came seeping out. Nuthin’ in it your readers can use, I fear.
So, lookin it over, I figured, “Hell, maybe I oughta put something in front of it they c’n use. So I’m sending along a copy of Vivisection. . . .
Reading Searls’ piece [The Sun, October, 1977]. About Wigner’s remarks. You know, those building cosmological models, projecting them “out there,” always, just like the poets, are mapping themselves, their own life-winds.
This is more apparent with Hawking than with most.
I wakened to this particular bit of horror, the poem his life work is, listening to him on a PBS documentary (or was it BBC?). Anyway, they were describing his “black holes” and he was telling part of it, trying to work his body. And I realized his “theory” was describing what it was to live inside his body. “Even the light can’t get out.” Y’know how, even with somebody who’s inarticulate, the meaning can get out, as he puts body-English on his trying? That meaning is the light. And when you can’t get the body language behind the language (or math), “even the meaning can’t get out.” Here’s this man, one of us, living in this decaying corpse, and projecting his poem of being all over the heavens. He’s living in a “black hole,” you see. There’s no art but poetry. No speech but poetry. And anybody that presses out any being, anybody who fights to “say,” ends up speaking his world, making a poem. And that ain’t inconsistent with my pointing out that most “poets” can’t see or say.
And math ain’t different from any other marks we make in the sand, eh?