The moon is showing off again this evening.
And yet, here I am, stranded, without the proper lens, knowing that whatever attempts I make to capture her beauty in a photo would be futile.
So I can only do the next best thing – paint a verbal picture.
She had just risen from her slumber, stepping out of her covers and revealing herself to the world. It is 8:30 pm, and she is directly in my level of sight.
She beams at me, proud of every single detail on her uneven surface. I see the craters so clearly…
So clearly …
…so clearly that it truly makes me question how the ancient people believed that the moon was a smooth, featureless sphere for so long. The dark patches are so distinctively obvious to the naked eye that I find it hard to fathom how Galileo was the first person to ever observe them (and with the help of a telescope).
But these patches by no means detract from the moon’s perfection. If anything, they just make her all the more mesmerizing. Whoever’s gaze so much as glazes over her would find it irresistible to just stare and observe, their breathing slowing.
My grandparents (who are not fully fluent in English) once asked me what ‘awesome’ meant. I said it meant ‘good’, because in our modern-day context, these two words are indeed used interchangeably. However, the original meaning of the word ‘awesome’ was lurking in the back of my mind… I just did not bother to mention it, since I barely ever encounter anyone using it.
The moon tonight, though, is the very epitome of awesomeness.
She glows a golden yellow, splaying out her brilliance like a peacock spreading her feathers. Her color today is so far from her usual whiteness, almost as if she is deliberately distinguishing herself from the snow that had descended in the previous night. Head high, she effortlessly commands the reverence of all things beneath her.
Her caramel color reminds me of old timepieces, of aged maps and of tea-stained diaries … she has seen so much, experienced so much. And yet she has this ageless youth to her, this sense of untainted elegance, untouchable gracefulness and unwavering wonder.
But as the night progresses, as I am writing this, she continues to ascend into the night sky, shrinking in size and fading back to her usual white color. It seems as though she is bashful, unwilling to hog the spotlight for too long in fear of the world being overwhelmed.
Maybe she prefers being there in the background … humming a soft, low tune instead of belting out an impressive opera piece as she observes the little people that mill about beneath her …
I wonder what she must think of us …
These little people, with absolutely no conception of what the moon herself has witnessed …