Last night looking up into the western sky just after sunset, I saw a tiny sliver of a lonely moon bone white in a purple sky. It caught me completely by surprise. Amazing, I thought, how strong an emotion such a thing can elicit. Vague memories leaped forth, memories without specifics, memories of feelings rather than events. The memory of seeing that same moon in that same sky as a ten year old boy, perhaps, waiting for his parents alone by the car in anticipation of going to see a movie at the drive-in theater. The big, hollow, longing, hopefulness, a cowboy sky, hoping to catch a spooky glimpse of those "Ghost Riders" he'd heard about in song. Memories of memories. Memories of seasons.
What grammar school year did I feel? What age? The warm memories of a young boy thinking on a Friday night about the week at school, the stories they'd been read, the paper cutouts they had decorated the walls with for the holidays. His grade. His class. It assumed a personality, a persona that subsumed them all. The steady sureness of it warmed him as he remembered it, remembered remembering it there on a Friday night waiting, looking at the sliver of a moon in the endless purple sky.
It is Friday the 13th. So many of those, too, though not so many as moons. My mother, born on a 13th, whose birthday sometimes fall on Friday.
My friend Sean put something wonderful on his blog yesterday:
"The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be." - Paul Valery
Hey! We must be aligned. I watched the sliver go from its purplish pink backdrop to velvet blue last night too. It made me so happy. I love a sliver turned the wrong way (waxing crescent that is).
ReplyDeleteWe had some awesome clouds that stretched across it from time to time too. It was a whimsical moon I think. So slender and almost hidden -- like a secret in the sky for those who happened to look.
Then at about 11:30 I sat on the back deck and waited for the star show. Perseids time you know.
I fell asleep before I saw anything but I'll try again tonight.
:-)
buying school supplies and touching pencils, and paper, and glue does the same thing for me...memories...
ReplyDeleteL, oh, yes, we are aligned : )
ReplyDeleteR, do they still have the cheap, lined paper with the big chunks of wood in it, and the big fat pencils? Many of my fondest memories come from Dick and Jane readers.