Spoiler! :
winter;
It's a Barnum and Bailey world –
Just as phony as it can be.
Just as phony as it can be.
Life is a circus and not a circus. It depends on how you look at it. Like a glass half full or half empty.
Psychiatrists have been telling you for years that the glass is half full, but how on earth can you believe their meant-to-be-motivational lectures when you can’t even see the goddamn glass? Or even their kindly, perhaps crinkly faces? You can’t even be sure if their faces were crinkly.
Kindly or not, you absolutely loathed the way your name rolled around in their mouths, split apart into syllables. The moon drowning, clinging to leftover pieces of dinner in their stupid saliva. And then, in your mind’s eye, your father’s eyebrows would knit together. “Artemis.” Not your name, but a warning. Stop being so unfeminine, so rude and crude was what he really meant.
Sometimes you can’t believe how unconventionally conservative your father is. It’s nearly the end of the swinging sixties, for God’s sake. He wouldn’t even let you curl your hair, or wear those fantastic skirts you heard about on the telly. He says it’s far too unseemly for young women, but you have a nagging suspicion it’s because you wouldn’t see how the blond curls bounce as you twist and turn in your brand new go-go boots anyway. Why waste good money on brand new clothes when you could wear your passed mother’s hand me downs? No guy in his right mind would prefer a well-dressed blind girl over a badly-dressed normal girl.
Brian says it’s okay, that you look like a Quaker Brigitte Bardot. You don’t know what a Quaker is, but Brian knows exactly how to comfort you. He’s more of a Brain than a Brian anyway; he knows practically everything, since he’s such an avid reader. You think he’s going to be a writer someday, with his obsessive-compulsive imagination.
“You’re the moon, literally. A planet amongst stars. Miraculous creation –“ you’d cut in halfway, laughing. You would have told him how ridiculous he’d sound, and how mad you were for being compared to the stupid moon. The moon’s a barrier; we all know it’s there, and no one can cross it. And it was the last damn thing you ever saw – the moon condemning you to a dark prison. You wouldn’t say all that, though. Brian’d worry in his joking, informal way and you didn’t want him to care so much.
“You sound like the goddamn astronauts reciting scripture to all mankind for Christmas yesterday. Like a broken down gramophone.”
Brian had sang, baritone melting with the whistling cold of the night.
“But it wouldn't be make-believe, if you believed in me.”
[void];
I am caught between termagant winter and carousing spring, between green bonds and soft lips – held captive by lambent eyes. Yes, I know I sound like a gramophone, cheesy and boring. I’m sorry I can’t do better with metaphors and descriptions, but they’re all I’ve got.
“You’re the moon, literally.” No, you’re much more than the moon, you’re my moon, Art. All that I’m sure of right now in my life. I know you’ll still be there on the fences, even if my house collapses. (It has happened once, but I’ll never tell you.) I know your miser of a father doesn’t like me coming over to your house. “You’re nothing but a ruffian after her inheritance.” And you know what?
Without your love, it's a honky-tonk parade;
Without your love, it's a melody played in a penny arcade…
Without your love, it's a melody played in a penny arcade…
I’m pretty sure why I keep on coming over, keep fooling around with you, even when my hands are oily from fixing snide businessmen’s cars, is because I need to make sure that the moon is still up there, watching over me. I need to be sure that you’ll never orbit around other people. No, that’s not true; I need to orbit around you instead.
I can’t bear the thought of me orbiting around something else. Or not orbiting anything at all. I can’t stand nights spent cowering on library floors anymore. I need the moon to illuminate all the things I still have: you and my books.
It’s adorable how you have this delusion that I’m not so bad off and that I’ll soon find a pretty girl in New York when I start my business, writing all day and night. But love – if you would let me call you love – all thoughts of running over to New York with only some notes in my hand disappeared if it meant that I would never see you again; your father wouldn’t let a meth addict’s son snatch away his only blind daughter. Yes, that is what I am, and there is no need to repeat it out loud. But I’ll never tell you that, because you’ll shun my company then, and I cannot – can’t, shan’t – go back to the void.
Love, Artemis dearest, believe me please – the words hesitate, little swallows on branches afraid to fly. I am not brave, I am not an astronaut. I am but a little satellite around your luminescence. A budding seed in the midst of harsh reality. Caught between spring and winter.
spring;
The cold is not so bitter now; spring’d come. Brian bought you the Beatles’ newest album yesterday; said it was a gift from his aunt. But you know better – his hands, covered with bumps and jagged lines, tell you a different story. “Been working nights again?”
No answer, just a small tune whistled by some of the swallows. “If you mean my writing, then yeah.”
He still isn’t ready to tell you about his job at that car repair shop down the road. Or the fact that your father wrecked his newly painted house. Or that he got accepted into New York University with a full scholarship. You know because your father told you, spluttering words too ugly and unrefined for him.
He’s worried enough already. “What’s the sky like today?”
“Yes, it's only a canvas sky, hanging over a muslin tree.”
“Enough with Ella Fitzgerald! Too old, too out. How’s the stupid moon today?”
“I thought you didn’t like the moon.” Accompanied by feet shuffling, it is a question.
“Of course. But you like talking about the moon for no reason – I’m just trying to start a real flesh-and-blood conversation here -“
“Art, what do you think of the Apollo Lunar Module?”
“You mean the most recent one?”
“Uh-huh.”
A pause. “It’s nice, somehow, to know that the moon is safe for landing and stuff. Pardon my French, but damn – who’d know we’d fly up to the freaking moon, of all things?”
“Ha. Who’d even have known that no one would support the stupid Vietnam War?” Who’d have known your brother died in the very first battle, you added silently for him.
Brian knew what you were thinking. “So what about the moon, huh Art? Why don’t you like it?”
“I just…don’t. The moon is the moon, nothing special. Just a ball of cool rock -”
“Artemis.”
“What the hell, Brian?”
“It is not just a moon, it’s our moon. It’s a sign.”
“Of what?”
“Of stuff.”
“Lemme tell you this: the moon is nothing but a stupid rock, a sign for godforsaken optimists that this world it is not as cruel and vain and selfish as it seems –“
“So what if I’m an optimist? So what if I believe that everything will turn out fine in the end?”
“That’s the problem! That’s the damn problem, Brian!”
“What the heck, Art –“
“You believe everything will turn better, and while you’re waiting, with your stupid jokes and words, you shoulder every single freaking boulder you can find! Yes, everything will turn out just fine for me, for my father, for everyone, but what about you?”
Silence.
“You don’t have to be alone in this, Brian. We’re friends, right? You’re no superhero.”
A sigh. “Lov- I mean, Art, everything isn’t as simple as you think it is.”
“But it wouldn't be make-believe, if you believed in me.”
summer;
I’d have told you how the moon shines bright tonight, against a pennyworth of stars. But I know you’d rather hear how light glints on broken glass; reposing at night is ridiculous, you once said. And the moon is far too dim for your porcelain orbs to penetrate its mellow, pale daisy skin.
Wait, I’d tell you; I’d tell you how the light of the moon scalds me, as clouds yank the canvas sky apart. I’d tell you I’d never believed, for even one second, that some guy was living on the moon of all places; but I’d wonder what life was up there, watching Earth-rises and sunsets in an endless void, all alone. And then I’d think about Laika, the dog in that Soviet satellite years ago, when we were still kids. She was destined to spend her days and nights in the chasm, until time and space meant nothing in the fremescent tide of life and death.
We are two satellites, dearest, one chafing his heart against paper bonds, the other imprisoned inside dull lenses, Someday our orbits will overlap each other; the axis on which we perch will throw us off balance. One will perhaps crash into the moon’s embrace, but you wouldn’t like that. Your moon is but a hot rock, bitter and atrocious.
In the centrifuge, all I can hope is the gravitational pull of the moon is just enough to swing us past the plants, the asteroids and the stars, until we are left in the vacuum with nothing but eternity. It’s the best option for two destined to be star-crossed. And secretly, I wish for the moon to engulf us two, and perhaps the Man on the Moon would be there to see us in all our glory, burning up like an aging star in timeless nebulae, going out with a bloom of interstellar gas and dust. I know you’d see the moon in all her magnificence then, and see how the moon is not a shadow, but a satellite too.
But you – and the moon – are young; for you, the moon is sentimental irony and vice versa. So I shall stay here with you on the fences, wondering about what ifs, as Neil Armstrong and his men go beyond the world you and I have always known; with your head on my shoulder, the moon seems too small to hold us then.
Say, it’s only a paper moon,
Sailing over a cardboard sea,
But it wouldn’t be make-believe
If you believed in me.
Sailing over a cardboard sea,
But it wouldn’t be make-believe
If you believed in me.
We are nihility and actuality, in the stars.
Gender:
Points: 31764
Reviews: 84