The afternoon moon
About that thing you may have lost along the way
27th January 2012
Back when I was around 13, on those days when I was not terrorizing the neighborhood on my very fast bicycle, probably most often when I was walking home from school, I always marveled at the afternoon moon, big white disc shining through the gleaming blue sky on a glittering sunny day.
Usually I noticed it right by St. Mary's Church, about a half mile south of our house, which had a nice green lawn and stone walls we could play on as we passed by it this way or that. All the data I had collected to this point in my supposedly developing brain had moon stuff neatly filed with night stuff, so the question naturally arose in my mind, "What the heck is the moon doing out during the day?"
But while there was something somehow wrong about it, something was also very right about it, very miraculous and mysterious, yes, something was very right about the moon's presence dancing without paying any notice whatsoever to the much brighter (but not that much brighter) Sun in the same sky communicated to me something of a brave spirit, not afraid to show who she was despite the presence of the Man with the Big Light. After all it was his sky, and she was parading across it, stealing the show, as it were, at least on some level in a little boy's brain, which was still a decade away from asking itself if it had ever had a real conversation with anyone.
Remembrance of this trivial fact in a long life many decades after the fact, through a prismic understanding of the tangents it ignited, sees this event now as a painting in the mind, with the regular and regal and unstoppable procession of the white queen through the day sky in the presence of the golden king of our solar system meant that all was well, as long as the queen came around regularly as the Sun just sat there and smiled contentedly.
In the memory of this scene, I am usually running happily, or riding a very fast bicycle, with an overwhelming feeling that everything was good and right in this world, if you could only understand why the beautiful moon, every now and then, appeared during the day.
· ·
For these and other, deeper reasons, right around this time, no earlier than 12 but no later than 14, I decided that I wouldn't grow up. It was based on what I saw all the adults around me doing. They were constantly forgetting that there is so much more to life than making money, and hiding behind the excuse of having to make it to the extent that they simply forgot, or were somehow forced to forget, what life is all about.
I remember thinking, I don't want to be like them. With them it's always about appearing to be tougher than the other guy, or wearing the right kind of makeup to steal some boy from some girl. It didn't occur to me way back then that there were environments and families that were beyond that kind of cookie cutter lifestyle that we had in the 1950s, when everybody believed what they heard on TV, and nobody even contemplated any version of revolution because life in the Wasp suburbs of Boston was so excellently beautiful. The playground was around the corner and the lake was not very far away.
Always on television it was about killing and money. I preferred listening to the river, and seeing how animals, specifically caterpillars, were so comfortable in their luxurious homes that people driving by fast in big cars thought were just bushes. When I saw my first caterpillar wriggle out and go airborne, I knew what the moon had told me was true. I saw it many years later in the photos from the Hubble space telescope, same process, different level.
I don't recall the specific punishment that ultimately threw me over the edge about all this and caused me to run away from home repeatedly, but long before that I was telling friends, "I don't want to be like them" and as I look around today, tears well in my eyes, and it is no satisfaction that I was right on the button so many frustrating years ago.
I don't want be like you, my fellow human beings. I have always wanted to be something more, something kinder.
I had realized that children see something that adults have forgotten how to see — namely, their own dreams. And I have vowed — and kept that vow — to never let go of that vision of what really is that only a child can see for real.
· ·
My life has come full circle in this self-made career of firing psychopolitical nukes into the cybersphere. I couldn't communicate with my parents then and I can't communicate with my readers now. Friends pat me on the back and say, oh, it's just that people have become too dumbed down, and certainly that is true on a certain level, but this propagandized malaise that is about to make so many of us go extinct at this time is even more disillusioning that that.
I've invented all these psychological concepts — all of which work wonderfully, BTW — to allow us to see all the things we've been missing, notably the subtle totalitarian coma that has descended over our minds for the past hundred years, where each aspect of our existence has been commandeered by some corporate entrepreneur, who links up with the worldwide corporate network and drives all the competition to despair and, very often, suicide, with stacked decks, fixed deals and trick contracts.
And as the religious zealots prove every day with their futile broadsides at their chosen enemy denomination, nothing ever gets accomplished on this level. This con has gone on since the dawn of time. But kids don't do it until adults teach them how to do it, and this is exactly where the downward spiral begins.
Humanity must be turned from a death cult into a life cult.
There is only one attitude that can save the world, that can prevent human society from destroying itself and everything it loves with its own pretensions.
And it would only take one thing, one little twist of the perceptual apparatus and the emotional balance beam.
That one thing?
Instead of teaching children, we should learn from them.
Instead of molding them into worker bees and parrot professors, we should let them guide us, because they — and only they — know the way home, and that's where we want to go.
That thing you lost along the way? They still have it. It's the most important thing anybody ever owns. Far too many of us let it slip away too long ago.
Oh sure, sure, you say they're just regurgitating what we their parents have told them, right?
The answer would be ... precisely! As in the eyes of your children, in their answer, you have what you told them refined by their dreams. You have what you always hoped for made visible.
Too few parents realize — along with all those others who realize then forget it — that these are the most important words you will ever hear in your life, as well as your marching orders for the future.
They are still connected to the dream that you had that ultimately made them, and their dreams will ultimately make you. Be sure and follow along home. This is the road to peace. Did you ever know a kid who prefers war? The only ones who do were taught to do so by their parents.
If you're ever asked where you heard this information, you can say that you heard it on one particularly beautiful day from the afternoon moon.
If you ever ask her about it, she's quite likely to remember you.
John Kaminski is a writer who lives on the Gulf Coast of Florida, constantly trying to figure out why we are destroying ourselves, and pinpointing a corrupt belief system as the engine of our demise. Solely dependent on contributions from readers, please support his work by mail:
250 N. McCall Rd. #2,
Englewood
FL 34223
USA
