The moon is brimming this evening. It is a Van Gogh moon, framed by my writing room window, and hanging in the uppermost corner of my personal “Starry Night”. Granted, it is a star-less night outside my window, but the spirit of Van Gogh swirls in it, in the darkness, the haziness around the edges of the moon, the black lines of the trees, the fingertips of the branches.
Tomorrow is a night of the full moon, New Year’s Eve. There will be a moment when the moon can hold no more, its arms full. I love that image, the moon’s arms full. Instead of a man in the moon, I imagine a Woman in the Moon. She is full of breast, and large of hip and thigh and belly, like those tiny clay goddesses that archaeologists unearth in remote places.
In my night-sky, the Woman in the Moon holds her arms out from her body in a perfect arc. The circle of her arms forms a womb, and within this fullness, within this curvature, is held the night secrets - the promises and whispers, the waxing and waning, how time began and how time ends. Around her, like the interaction of island and river, celestial currents and eddies swirl, the pull of the tides. It is all there, in Van Gogh’s Starry Night, and in this evening, too.
If you look closely at my Woman in the Moon, you’ll see that her skin is smooth as alabaster, and as calm as deep sleep, deep space. Her eyes are closed, and you think she dreams. Her skin is tinged blue, for she is a blue moon. She is not the only blue One; there is Krishna, but his skin is dark, and her skin is the blue-grey of twilight.
A blue moon is the second full moon in a calendar month. This New Year’s Eve is the night of a blue moon. Those who count the movements of the night sky say that such a celestial happening, a blue moon on New Year’s Eve, occurs once every 19 years. The tracking is predictable, like clockwork, all the more reason for a dreaming Woman in the Moon. Mystery to counter the rational, or to contemplate it. The universe craves both the observer and the observed.
In honour of precision, I can tell you the precise moment of the New Year’s full moon. It isn’t a Van Gogh Starry Night moment after all. The moon will be completely full for only a pinprick of time - 2:13 pm, December 31, 2009. Behind curtains of clouds, and daylight, the moon will wax to her fullest, and then pull her secrets closer to her breast, wane. Begin to lose sight of herself.
I know this, because I downloaded an app to my iPod that tells me such moon things, lunar things, lunatic things. Twenty-four hours before the onset of a full moon, my iPod turns into a werewolf and howls at the virtual moon that fills the screen. This howling amuses me in a werewolf-ish kind of way. The app tracks the moon phases, and also tells me other moonutiae/minutiae, such as the name of the full moon by calendar month. For December, the lady is a Cold Moon, or Oak Moon, or Christmas Moon, whether you choose her Celtic face/phase, or Wiccan, or Colonial American. But on this New Year’s Eve, she is Ms Blue.
This New Year, I’m shifting perspective, not making a list of my shortcomings and then trying to rectify them by creating resolutions. Instead I’m contemplating what makes me happy, fulfilled, full-filled, what makes me feel blue-moonish, a woman-in-the-moon. I’m going to fill my life with these things until my arms are full. The list is simple. Story-dreaming, story-crafting. Exercise, activity. Rivers, water. Family, friends. And a little boy-in-the-moon, little boy blue. The baby who holds the universe in his eyes.