Me and the Quarter Moon
Some nights belong to music, some mornings to the sea; the moon binds them together in me.
I. The Quarter Moon
The quarter moon
Watches from the zenith
While Sol makes her
Morning debut—
Stunning, as always.
Then, like Christ’s
Ascension, the clouds
Carry the night star
Into shrouded mystery.
We know where she went,
But it is faith that tells us.
The little sandpiper runs through the dry sand; each time a foot lifts, a tiny puff of grains follows it. When it sprints, there’s a cartoony effect of little sand clouds. This moment feels like the perfection of existence—peace and life, hunger and satisfaction, joy and contentment—at the beach.
II. The Concert
Last night we spent the evening with live music. There’s nothing like it in the whole world. It’s louder, not as clean, hard to hear the lyrics, messy, stinking of alcohol, and the views are usually cluttered. Yet it is easily the best way to experience sound—like a raw tap into the heartbeat of the universe.
And last night, Blind Melon rearranged me at the molecular level. They were loud and raucous, and I knew none of their catalog. It’s an odd thing to walk into a live performance without knowing the band’s work. I suppose that’s the enduring power of their 1992 hit single No Rain. Earlier in the day we spun a couple of their albums (Soup and Nico) and were surprised at how bluesy and guitar-heavy they were—clear evidence that we’d never really known the band. Which is too bad; it would have been so much richer to know the lyrics we were being drenched in.
Being an introvert at heart, it was challenging to lose my partner to the crowd. But at only five feet tall, she easily slips to the front of any crowd. While I tower above six feet, I feel bad being next to her, knowing another short girl will have to stare at the back of my head all night. I have great hair, but not that great. So I settled in at the back of the crowd, sipping Jameson and Yuengling, humming, swaying, and bouncing to the music. As the drink did its work, my motion became increasingly animated until I managed to reach full-on groove mode.
By the time I recognized a few songs (Soup, Change, Tones of Home, Sleepyhouse—a tribute to the Durham house where they became a band), I was sonically neck-deep in the night. It was wonderful. I’d lost my partner to the crowd, and my thoughts turned to my muse, who would have been just as lost to the sounds as my betrothed. Such is the power of the musician.
My wife—she had a ball down front. Travis Warren, the lead singer, made those closest his focus, and she quickly switched into friendly mode when he stepped up and shouted, “COME ON, MAMMA!” Then he hugged her along with the other women there. His hot, wet body pressed hard against her, making it clear he wasn’t phoning in this performance. It was an emotional and physical journey.
Meanwhile, I marveled at the pure joy of everyone there. Music has a way of making people forget their lives aren’t ideal. No one was worried about bills, or family, or anything other than letting the sound wash over and through them.
III. The Night Extends
The concert left us buzzing, and instead of letting the night end, we followed its pulse into the streets. On the way back to Camper Van Beethoven, we passed an outdoor club packed with young, beautiful men and women swaying and bouncing to thick bass and rapid lyrics I didn’t know. Dropping in, we quickly found the sound ideally suited to inducing dance-mode in us both.
She was already well-relaxed thanks to a generous portion of vodka and tonic, but now she was enjoying something cranberry. I discovered this when a generous splash went down my shirt in a particularly rambunctious routine. I kept tugging her zipper down on her blouse to appreciate her ample bosom, but she—three sheets to the wind—was still such a prude, pulling it back to the Victorian setting. We weren’t flashing any ankles that night.
Sigh.
Still, we had a ball.
After a few hours, I sobered up enough to drive us home, and we arrived without incident. Driving in the middle of the night in Pensacola is vastly different from the daytime, when the single arterial road is jammed with everyone trying to be in the same place at once. Lots of waiting. But tonight? It was just her and me and this strip of blacktop cordoned by decades-old evergreens and the occasional palm.
IV. Strange Hours
I had hoped the night might turn carnal. But walking in the door, I could tell she was spent after a long day of museums, gallery walks, sweating in the sun, and finding the concert venue. So I poured her into bed and fell next to her like a timbered tree. My phone kept me engaged for a while, but even it couldn’t stave off the length and breadth of the day, and I quickly succumbed to the call of night.
I was surprised the next morning to find that sometime between drifting off at two and waking at five, I had sent a text to a woman I love. It wasn’t graphic, explicitly, but it was very suggestive. More surprising still—I had no recollection of sending it. There was also evidence that something carnal had occurred during the night, though apparently without a partner. Such is the experience of the sexually frustrated.
V. Morning with the Moon
But morning was waiting to wash me clean.
My eyes opened to a piercing blue light slipping through the curtains. It had been there the last two nights, but the parted drape now let it pierce my soul. Climbing from bed, I pulled the curtain wide to see a cluster of port lights—the richest blue I’d ever seen. Not so bright as to drown out the faint lighting of the eastern sky.
Now was a great time to head to the beach, I decided. I pulled on a minimum of garments to stay within decency laws, slipped into my flip-flops, and headed out the door. Fifteen minutes later, I was hauling my sleeping bag down the beach, looking for peace and quiet. What I found was a quarter mile of powdered white sand at Johnson State Beach, just before dawn.
At the water’s edge, it was cold before sunrise. I decided I didn’t come to swim, and lay out on my sleeping bag to meditate on what I beheld. The morning creatures were already fully alive and doing the business of survival. The crabs flitted and dove into dens as the gulls, pipers, pelicans, and plovers all vied to consume as many of the terrestrial aliens as possible. It was an orchestra of life.
The birds provided the winds, the ocean the bass, the grasses sang like strings.
Lying supine and uncovered, the morning breezes worked the hair of my body, giving me that massage only nature can—gentle, constant, and thorough. No masseuse can match this experience.
It was then that I rolled and saw the moon for the first time. High overhead, where the sun would be in six hours, a dim quarter pearl watched me. She was beautiful from her perch. No crowning star this morning—just stationed in her high place.
I watched her for a long time, serenaded by the birds out early for breakfast. In the periphery, I could see the crabs growing bold at my stillness. They had forgotten I was a giant monster waiting to demolish them. Their own soft, pale, fleshy Godzilla. (Don’t tell them I can’t breathe fire.)
That morning, though, I was pure pleasure. The world was at least a mile away, and I was content.
VI. Olga the Fish
The sun was warming the beach, and the time had come to wet myself in the clear, inviting waters of the Gulf. I darted to the water as God intended and immediately marveled at how clear everything was in the early hours. I could walk hundreds of feet before it was deep enough to hide me modestly.
And as I waded, I was struck by the beauty of the undulating sand. The real power of the wind traverses the oceans and makes its hand felt even at the bottom.
Our unclad bodies cut through the water like fish. I see why swimmers work so hard to wear suits that mimic their own skin.
The wind had not yet begun to churn the seas, and it was easy to float far out. I lay back and watched the moon watch me. Did she even notice? I was just a white speck on a palette of green and blue.
I felt a nibble on my calf and glanced down to see a small fish, maybe eight inches long, striped black and white.
“Why, hello!” I said. “I hope your morning is half as good as mine.”
She told me her name was Olga. She was part of a big family, but they were busy with other fish things. She was an explorer and wanted to make a new friend.
As she nibbled my toes, legs, stomach, and back, she gossiped about the sea creatures:
“Oh, you’d never believe what that sea turtle gets up to, that stinker. Always causing mischief, that one. But good for a delivery if you need that sort of thing.”
“And Macy, the dolphin—well, you didn’t hear it from me, but she really gets around. Always chasing boats and hanging out with your kind. You hardly ever see her with her pod.”
“And there’s this oc—Octavia. Good grief! Always with her head buried in a book. You’d think she was a professor. The crabs keep bringing her reading glasses they find. They think it’s hilarious!”
Olga could really go on.
She said she could call her family and show me a secret island that could be all mine, but I demurred. I was already growing pruny from the hours submerged here, and so I took my leave.
VII. Whole Again
Emerging from the ocean, I was a creature from another world. Not of the sea, not of the land. I was sunlight and sand and joy. My muse would be proud of this state of nirvana. I have struggled for so long with peace of any kind, and in this moment exceeded all expectation.
I dove to my place on the beach and basked in the warming rays of the sun.
Thirty minutes of this would see me dry.
One day like this a year will see me right.
I was reading a book about a remarkably bright octopus and decided now was a good time for a chapter. But the early hour caught up, and in no time I slipped the bonds of consciousness.
The day had barely begun, yet I was already whole. The quarter moon had seen me through the night, and the sun was ready to take me the rest of the way.
#essay #memoir #journal #osxs #100daystooffset #writing
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Thank you for coming here and walking through the garden of my mind. No day is as brilliant in its moment as it is gilded in memory. Embrace your experience and relish gorgeous recollection.
Into every life a little light will shine. Thank you for being my luminance in whatever capacity you may. Shine on, you brilliant souls!
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