The moon waxing gibbous as seen through my camera lens. I had hoped to get an earlier phase of the moon, perhaps the waxing crescent as well as the first quarter, but the sky conditions didn’t allow that to happen. I take what is given to me and will make do with that in terms of my SoFoBoMo project. If weather permits, I will be able to get the full moon and the waining phases as well as the new moon. For my information in preparing for the book as well as these blogs, I went to Moon Connection where a useful chart is available explaining the phases of the moon as well as a host of other interesting information regarding the moon.
With this image, the idea of “whiteness” must be discarded. The pits and discolorations and shadows can’t all be written off to defects in the cameras lens. Rather, the moon must be seen as it truly is, a rock that is sterile and which, unlike our planet, can’t support life. The moon is a cold, hard, lifeless orb mindlessly circling our planet. That should be the end of all talk of the moon. But, science and the real facts be damned. We want more from “our” moon.
I know that the facts we have today about the moon and the sun provide us with no room for some romance, or alchemy. However, it has never been the sun or the moon. It has always been about our looking out of eyes onto a world trying hard to find meaning while being trapped behind the lenses of our eyes. As each of us moves through the days of living, we learn that there “is” more than what our senses tell us exists. Our senses deceive us, even in terms of parents and siblings.
This is especially true in terms of relationships. How can we ever truly know an “other” when we are so desperately forever in search of “self?” Yet, it is only in relationship to “other” than one begins to see otherwise hidden aspects of “self.” It is as if one requires submersion into the unknown as a means of discovering more about who we are. And so, as humans we have encoded this hard won awareness of how we come to be conscious beings into myths, into rituals and onto images (archetypes) – a process that has been ongoing since the dawn of human awareness.
The whole process begins with us instinctively seeking out an other person in order to fill a mandate for the survival of the species, something that is unconsciously driven. Men reach for women and women reach for men. There is nothing conscious about any of this. And because of that, we must create stories so that we feel less of a victim, more in control. And so begin the clumsy gropings for understanding.