ME AND THE MEMENTOS OF THE MOON

I have tried, I truly have, to remember how I found the first stone. But despite all my efforts, I’ve returned empty handed and hurt by memory’s disdain. So I guess this story won’t begin at the beginning, but I humbly offer my first memory as a place to start. I woke up, with cold feet and with the sudden wonder of the whereabouts of my socks. Found them! Tangled in-between the bed and the wall, what a comfortable place for a sock to be. Sorry to disturb you, but y’alls are coming with me. Had breakfast; sunny side up. Winter calls for sunny side up since the sun is nowhere to be found and the closest I can get to it is my plate. I was ready to leave when I saw it, a small white stone, laying suspiciously and quite modestly, in the middle of the second step of the five step stairway that leads to my house. One could also say it was right in the middle of the fourth step of my five step stairway if one were to count the stairs from bottom to top. Lets just say it was on the second step, since this is the way I would have counted it because I was going out into the world, not coming back from it. 

 

I was already late, not late late, but the stone was too intriguing to kick out of my way. I bent over to pick it up and as I did I remember audibly saying “jeez! this fella is light”.It was unusual for me to say that out loud. I like to keep to myself. What if the neighbour saw me speaking to a stone, calling it fella, while they idly watered their frostbit peonies? Very embarrassing. I’ve never been one of those people who speaks to themselves, but to be fair, I was speaking to a stone in front of my house, not myself. You could even argue I was simply greeting this uninvited guess, not to toot my own horn but I can be reasonably gallant. Reasonably. So, back to the stone, it was light, very light. You know how sometimes you pick something up and because of its weight it is as if that something begged to be thrown? This is how light the stone was. I immediately wanted to throw it, although I resisted the impulse because I had some inspecting to do. I tried to crush it with my fingers, expecting it to crumble the way dry cookies do, but it was very dense, very tough. Odd, how could it be this dense and light at the same time? Odd. What is this? I’ve never seen this before. It doesn’t smell, or maybe it does, but I can’t understand what it smells like. I have no comparison. Lets leave it at: odd smell. Taste? Hmmm, maybe another day, I just brushed my teeth. I’ll keep it in my pocket. Right pocket. Right t-shirt pocket. Right, stripped t-shirt pocket, just bought it for myself. Santa was very eager this year. Santa is not real, I bought it, it was 45 dollars. So, with stone in pocket and mind somewhere outside any conceivable map, I left for work. I was at work, did work, had lunch, work, left, thought about work in the future, future work, stopped thinking about it, reminded myself “happy thoughts”, and took the last step of that lovely five step stairway. 

 

I was very painfully reminded of the stone in my pocket when the angry fella stabbed me as I threw myself onto the couch. I took it out of my pocket and started to fiddle with it while I stared at the ceiling for something called “way too long”. I felt the stone getting smoother and smoother, so much fiddling had polished it. What is this? Truly, what on earth is this? It was still hard, but it was now a perfectly smooth sphere. It reminded me of my father’s golf balls. I spent another “way too long” looking at the stone. I had no answers, and all my questions were leading nowhere. I was absolutely dumbfounded by this dumb object I had found. Eventually, after a few “way to long”s, you have to go to bed. I carried my body, which had gained 20 pounds since the morning, over to my room and carefully placed the stone on the edge of my nightstand. I slept, and as I did, I dreamt. When I was young, my mom told me this story about chemist, who’s name I don’t remember, who figured out the structure of some sort of compound because he had this weird dream with snakes, or maybe they were worms, and they were all biting each others tails and creating a shape that turned out to be what he had been looking for all those years. After hearing this story, I’ve held the idea that dreams can carry the truth, the truth that we are unable or unwilling to unearth while awake. That night, I dreamt the truth. I slept, I dug, I unveiled, and my sheets stole my socks. 

 

I woke up and as I laid there, cold feet once again, staring at the edge of my nightstand, I was afraid. The moon was in my room. I mean, not the moon moon, but a part of it. The moon was at the edge of my nightstand. What an honor, but in the same breath, a very frightened, what? How could this be, I mean it definitely was, that stone was a piece of the moon, but how? Later on I would find out that it is not the how’s that are scary but the why’s. I jumped out of the bed, feeling a sudden spark in courage coming from my knees, and ran towards the stone. I held the moon. Me, in my room, my hands and the moon. I found a second stone, this time lodged in my throat and it came out with some salty water and a sequence of short breaths. Shit, its Wednesday, no time to hold the moon. I wrapped the moon in my favorite scarf and placed her under my pillow, she mustn’t be cold. Sunny side up, one, two, three, four, five, work, lunch, work, happy thoughts, moon, moon, moon, moon, bam! ouch(!)… Wh… what was that? No, it can’t be, another one? I had tripped over the moon on my way back home. This piece was bigger, about the size of a some kids favorite plushie, laying on the sidewalk of 6th and Goth. I picked it up, it was definitely the moon, no doubt. It had been raining all day so the moon was an island in a sweet sea, or, a stone in a puddle. The street was poorly lit and yYou could see just how bright the stone was, by the light that rippled through the unassuming puddle. It was beautiful; silent, close and beautiful. I dried her with my t-shirt and took her home. One, two, three, four, five. Couch, “way too long”s, questions and polishing. 

 

The stairway to my room has 12 steps, on this night I only used 6. I laid in my bed, with two quiet companions and as I cradled them in my arms, I felt sadness. I was sad because I loved them too much. My two pieces of moon. You know how love is sometimes too much and it comes with fear and then you know it is love because it is not only sweet but it is sour. And you look at love and you wonder how tightly you can hold as to not loose and you find yourself hugging a bit too hard for a bit too long. I had this stupid idea that if I held my pieces of the moon for an unreasonable amount of time, I would polish them to extinction. My embrace would turn them into dust. What a stupidly terrifying thought. Nonetheless, this was the reason why I decided to keep my stones in a jar. I went downstairs, made myself a wicked jam sandwich, rinsed the jar, and found a home for the moon. I washed the lid as well, because although I knew stones don’t grow legs and leave, I was afraid these would. What a painful thing that would be. I placed a nice silk handkerchief at the bottom of the jar and carefully laid the moon over the purple and yellow polkadot landscape. I tucked the jar into the right side of the bed. I’ve always slept on the left side, and no one, not even the moon, would take that away from me. This was the first time the right side of my bed had some weight to it. I was almost beginning to wonder if the mattress sunk on the other side. I imagined it hardening, becoming a marble tomb, and allowing no one to rest comfortably. To my delight, the right side of my bed still kept its softness. There we were, both of us, the moon and I sinking into the floor, over sponge and springs. Goodnight, I hope you dream of me as I will of you. 

 

Over the next couple of weeks, I kept finding pieces of the moon. I found one underneath my desk, I found one in a corner of the subway and one in my sink. On a Friday I stole the moon from a kid. I had eaten sushi, blue crab roll and an embarrassing amount of soy sauce, and as I walked back home I saw this kid playing with a small white object in the park. I felt it, right in the depths of my gut, the kid was playing with my moon. How dare he? I ran towards him and yanked her from his hands. He was startled, confused and then he began to cry. What a baby. I ran north and although he tried to catch up with me, I’m pretty proud to say I can outrun a heartbroken 8 year-old. I took her home and I did what I had been doing for days and days. I laid, polished, way too longs and smiled. I was happy. I was finding multiple stones per day and I was running out of jars. I grew confident that the stones would stay with me, after all, she had chosen me to shelter them, hadn’t she? I began to let the stones loose, they were all over the place. I could barely see the darkness of my hardwood floor and I was getting calluses on my feet. I stumbled my way through my house, I slipped many times, and my bed was dusty the way your bed is when you’re little and you go to the beach with your Father and he tells you to rinse your feet before going to bed but you’re to young and wise to listen to an uptight old dog and your sheets are now sandy and you’re admittedly slightly uncomfortable. I was so happy. I had the moon in my room, and in my kitchen and in my living room and in my t-shirt drawers and even in my fancy shoes. I would tell her stories and even tough she would keep still I knew she was listening and I knew she was happy too. 

 

Jeez! I didn’t see you there, sorry! Don’t worry about it, days are getting real dark, huh? She was right, it was strangely dark. What an astute observation from a young lady. I know these streets are not well lit but it had been suspiciously dark lately. I had averted my gaze from the sky since I was 11. No particular reason, I guess it was just an overall indifference, a mundane boredom, a feeling that the sky had nothing to offer. But something compelled me to look up. Maybe it was that void exchange with the faceless young lady, but everything changed when I laid eyes on her. When I laid eyes on the moon. She was half gone. Half gone. What had I done? 

 

One, two, three, I don’t know if I want to get to five, what have I done? I was happy I guess. Too happy. The white scenery that the turning of a knob would reveal was once the brightest of promises, and now it seemed like the most dire forest fire. What had I done? She was all over my place, I had kept her captive, a hostage on my kitchen floor and in all the pictureless corridors. What will I do? I don’t know what I was thinking. I was gathering all her pieces, and I was unaware of the painfully simple law that if she was here, she couldn’t be up there. But, does she want to be up there? Maybe she likes it better down here. I have hot water, oatmeal, some nice records and plenty of light in the summer. I mean, maybe she’s happy, maybe this is exactly what she wants. Maybe the moon wants to live in my living room. I wanted to deceive myself, but it is hard to lie when things are so clear. The moon belongs to the sky. The moon is no moon sitting in a living room. I went to bed that night, and felt as if I had swallowed all the stones that had lathered all the square inches of my home and they were now weighing me down. I know I said they were light, but as cotton balls turned heavy by oil, the stones had been soaking in a substance that now made me feel sick and guilty. Guilt from holding onto something that doesn’t want to be held. I can’t keep her, I can’t. 

 

For the next couple of days I spent all my time thinking of ways to return to her what she had lost. I called in sick, and later on said I was taking a trip to Germany. Being distant with my co-workers had proven to be a great strategy since they might have been able to call my bluff if they knew how much I hated airplanes. I started with conservative, easy ways to return the stones. I returned some of them to the spot where we had met, in hopes that the moon would retrace her steps and take back what she had dropped. This didn’t work. I returned the next day and all the stones where still there, exactly as I had left them. I couldn’t leave them all alone again, I barely made it through the night without them, so I took them back home until I thought of something else. All the while I was trying to fill the crumbling moon, I kept finding pieces of her scattered throughout the city. It was very frustrating because I knew that the more I got the more I would have to return, but I was also a loyal confidant. I couldn’t just leave her there, I had grown to love her so much that neglect seemed like a myth; a scary story told in the heat of summer bonfires. Each night I would return with bags and bags of moon, and the nights went from dark blues to deep blacks so dark that your own shadow was something you could barely remember. I dug 13 holes in my backyard and filled them with my dearest friends. I thought that maybe the moon would see this as an offering and would be inclined to take back what was rightfully hers. This didn’t work either. I prepared a hot bath and carefully rubbed the mud off the precious white stones, there you go, nice and clean. I was growing impatient, mostly scared by the nightly reminder of my lovers dimming light, and my methods went from tender and slow to aggressive and sudden. I burnt the stones, hoping the smell of the smoke would alert her and she would find her way back to me. No success. I polished the stones into a love letter, carefully turning them into C’s and E’s and M’s and O’s. It read, “Come back, I’m waiting”. I left the sign on the roof for a few days but to no avail, she didn’t write back.This one is a bit hard to admit but I even ate a few stones, I’m not sure what I was thinking but I was running out of ideas. I polished them into small pebbles, the size of a chickpea, and fixed myself a warm chunky vegetable soup. I must admit it was tasty, but the next morning I was able to confirm that this had not work either. I was trying my best, why was she being so distant? What did she want from me, I was doing the right thing, right? She wasn’t taking any of the stones back, and whats more, she was still shattering into pieces and my back was hurting from bending so often. Why was I the only one who cared? I could see others kicking the stones out of their way, stepping on them, looking with a hint of curiosity, that was as quick to leave as it was to come. And then there were the ones who didn’t even look, the ones who believed themselves so big that turning their gaze towards another was a laughable matter. Over those 2 weeks of attempting and failing to make the moon whole, I had nightmares so vivid that I felt those 2 weeks as if it had been 2 months. I would dream of a big black puzzle. All the puzzle pieces the same shape, and as I put the puzzle together, the scenery would go darker and darker. In my dream darkness wasn’t to be shied away from but pursued, and as I came closer to complete black, I was running out of puzzle pieces. I could barely see the ones I had left and I would run my fingers over the ground in hopes of feeling another. At last the puzzle was missing a single piece. I would look for hours and hours, frantically pacing around the dark room, not being able to find the final piece. The light that poured in from the small hole that the missing piece afforded would grow brighter and brighter. And I was blinded by it. Blind and unable to finish what I had set up to do, I would kneel in a room that was now dark not because I found the final piece but because I wasn’t able to. Darkness was what I was pursuing and it was what I got, and it would be the only thing that I would have. You know how nightmares often wake you up with a jump as you exit the climax of the story? Well, nightmares with a slow awakening are the saddest ones. I would slowly fade back into consciousness and I would leave me in that big dark room. Alone and resigned. 

 

I think I was afraid of missing a piece of her and not being able to make the moon whole again. I was also afraid that the light that had surrounded me for weeks, all those bright white stones, had blinded me and the thought of that was unforgivable and nauseating. 

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As I witnessed darkness getting closer and closer to the furthest corners of the night, I felt it reaching into the furthest corners of myself as well, and the only thing capable of fighting it was the glare of anger. I was getting angrier and angrier; at myself for doing this to her, and realizing it too late, at her for fading away without fighting, for looking down at me while I gave her all I had to put her back together, and at the sun for coming out each morning unchanged and pretending everything was all right, expecting me to forget my lover slowly paling into the night.  

 

I was trying my luck again with the burning of the stones and made a big bonfire on my backyard. As I threw bits of moon into the fire, I was enthralled by the white smoke that gracefully danced its way up into the stars. I ran out of moon and the smoke ceased but my gaze was fixed upward. Never have I felt such ache as I did in that instant, the moment I realized she was completely gone. I ran upstairs and climbed my way up to the rooftop where once a love letter laid, hoping that maybe I simply couldn’t see her from my backyard. Last time I had seen her she was a thinner than a toe nail, she couldn’t leave that quickly, could she? What I was really asking was, she can’t leave, can she? But she could, and she did, she was gone. If I looked hard enough I could still see a faint shadow of where she once was. The shadow was mocking me, telling me, yes, here she was, confirming that what I loved was real, but it was now gone. The shadow took away from me the chance of pretending she never was, denying me soothing self-deceit. A thousand stones lodged in my throat, a sea of salt and a complete inability to keep my chest still. I don’t know how I did it but I could’ve sworn I jumped from my roof to the backyard. I ran into the house, and went straight to the kitchen were I had kept the largest stones that I had found, safe inside the 80 year old oven. The stones were the size of a decently fed cat, and a few overweight squirrels. I ran outside and did what desperate men do, fight without strategy. I emptied my pockets and started to throw the stones as high as my strength would allow me, hoping she would see them and reach down for one last battle. As I threw the bits of moon it seemed like she was doing the opposite, instead of catching what I was offering, she was throwing them back at me with double the force. Why was she so upset? I was trying to help. My arm grew stronger and stronger, partly fueled by the rejection from a loved one, and her blows grew bitter and bitter. I could taste the metal of her scorn. In the midst of sharp agony, I picked up what would be my last attempt, the final stone. I wasn’t completely unafraid when faced with the premonition that a cat sized stone could be thrown back at me with double the force, but I was also naively hopeful, she wouldn't do that to me. I threw the stone with all the force my bruised body could muster, and I saw it spinning in the sky. It was fascinating. That big white stone, spinning slowly in the sky, with the stars as witness, cheering it on. For a moment there, from where I was standing, it looked like the moon had taken my gift, and she was whole and glittering again. But I was wrong. I woke up with the yellow of a sun, and the dark reds and dry browns of a battle. My cheeks getting hotter and hotter, it took me a few minutes to realize that it was heat from anger and not heat from the beaming star. I calmly walked back inside, the way those who have lost everything also loose any desire to run, to be quick. I threw myself onto the couch, and felt nostalgic for that first stone in the right side of a stripped t-shirt pocket. I slept but I failed to dream. She was gone from the sky, and she was gone from my dreams as well. The only thing that remained were the piles and piles of stones that carpeted my living room, my room, and my bathroom. I slept, no dreams, woke up to darkness, “figures; no moon”, and shut all the blinds in my house. I had been defeated, and the darkness coming from the street was an excruciating reminder. 

 

I slept for longer than “way to long”. I woke up to darkness and slipped back into it again and again. Dark living room, the bright light of the open refrigerator door, the weirdly bright white of a glass of milk, close my eyes, dark all over again. The piles of moon that I had left had lost their gleam. They stood still as shapeless grey mountains. They were lifeless, and their emptiness spoke to mine. And then, all of a sudden, one night, or day, I dreamt. I dreamt of a memory that I had forgotten, I dredged up a memento buried deep in the cave system of my past. I was a kid once more, and my father took me to a lake, his favorite lake. We went fishing at night because he told me that fish had nightmares and that they would restlessly swim to keep themselves from falling asleep. I never believed him, that was too cruel of a life to be true. We were fishing, well, he was fishing cat fish, and I was looking at the worms in the can. He noticed my interest in the worms and he shut the lid, he couldn’t bare the idea that his son didn’t share the same passion for fresh water fishing as him. With nothing to stare at anymore, and looking into my father’s eyes was as absurd as ideas could be, I scanned the area to see if I would find something interesting. I saw the moon and it was beautiful. Bright and full, and almost yellow. I was distracted by some splashing in the water and then I saw the moon again. This time it wasn’t the moon but the reflection of her, and somehow this was even more precious. Her shimmer, her way of moving through the water, her way of kindly sharing with me the ways water hums. I was happy. I don’t know how long it took my father to realize this and to intervene but he said “Don’t stare at the water, you’ll scare the fish”. I told him I was looking at the moon, and he rejected this, the moon was up in the sky and I was staring at the lake, I told him it was more beautiful that way, he mocked me. After all those years, he couldn’t understand that the beauty of beautiful reflections is that they capture the grandeur of the beautiful. Beauty so noble that there’s no need to look straight into it to perceive it. Beauty so dignified that it ripples escaping greed. The moon was beautiful on her own, and she could keep it all to herself, but in choosing reflection, she chose to share and the beauty of that is as simple as can be. I kept staring at the white and black waves, my father caught a few fish, whose scales embodied the moon, and then we were off to shore. I woke up and laid still. That was the last time I had seen the moon before the first stone appeared on my doorway. I kept still, the memory was paralyzing. And then, after a while, all I can remember was hoping my Father was able to find the beauty in rippling and reflection. 

 

After that dream I knew exactly what to do with the remaining stones. I couldn’t keep them in my home, they weren’t true to the greatness of the moon, and now I had figured out a place worthy of their eternal rest. Over the next couple of weeks I would sleep while the beaming star tried to seep its force through the shut blinds and I would wake up as night crept in. I would gather as many stones as I could fit in my grocery bags and I would drive them to the lake where my father once caught a few cat fish. Once I got there I would open the bags and place the stones one by one in the winter cold water. As days went by and my ritual gained sacred status, I noticed that the water was getting whiter and whiter. It resembled what I once saw, and cherished, when I was a kid. The stones were getting their light back as I was lovingly letting them go into the lake. I felt as though the moon was happy now. I liked to believe that she remembered me from that day too, and maybe she found a way to find beauty in me, in the me deeply entertained by the can of worms, and that she was happy I came back to the place where we met and she was able shine once again. On a Thursday I let go of the final stone, I thought I would be sad to finally let her go, but the shimmer in the water was so fascinating that I had no time or space to feel anything but awe. I was happy. As I looked at the lake one last time, that white and dark blue symphony, I said goodbye to the moon, and she promised to visit me in my dreams. 

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One, two, three, four, five, 12 step staircase, left side of the bed. While shifting and turning trying to find that sweet spot to sleep, I heard a familiar tinkering. I heard it a few more times before I decided to look for its origin. I found it; a jar, with the lid tightly closed, and two small patient stones. I could barely remember hiding this treasure, but I could vividly remember the feeling that inclined me too. I was not ready to let go, I couldn’t face the idea of not being able to hold her again. As I opened the lid I was also opening something that I had shut and hid deep inside of me. I took them out and held them as tightly as my heart would allow. I was once afraid of holding for way too long and way too hard. Taking a few steps back in order to contain my fear of loosing what I loved. But I couldn’t do it any longer, in that moment I decided to hold them for as long as I could and as hard as I was able too. I decided that if I was to polish them to extinction, to embrace them into dust, I would rather feel and loose than not feel out of fear of loosing. There we were, two stones and man, a man in love with the moon. I shut my eyes and felt myself dreaming, I was woken up, startled by a bang, and saw that one of the stones had fallen to the ground and broken. I was picking up the pieces when I saw a bright silver line, like lightning, coming through the window. The blinds were shut but the intensity of the light managed to seep through one of the cracks and was now shining on my hardwood floor. I stood up and walked over to the window, I opened the blinds and there she was; big, deep and undaunted. A how? Popped into my mind but it promptly left with no trace as I was not interested in the answer. I stood there for a while, stupefied by celestial grandeur. I was pulled into her orbit and was blissfully dizzy. 

 

I took the last two stones, one of which was now shattered, and got into my car. I drove to the lake without ever looking at the road, she was guiding me and I trusted her. I took of my clothes and felt my body go numb as I walked into the lake with two stones in hand. I could see the silver water moving as I moved my body, and as I went deeper in, I couldn’t feel or see any of the stones that I had left over the last couple of days. I never figured out where they went. I was ready to let go of her completely, and I was also aware that she would never leave. While I carefully placed the stones at the bottom of the lake, with all the cat fish and the unanswered mayday notes inside wine bottles, I at last understood the depth of memory. I once believed I held the moon as I polished, gathered and threw the pieces of her that I had found. But I’ve come to realize that we’re only able to hold what we love in memory, because although memory sometimes fades or hides, it can never be eclipsed. And as I stood there, in her reflection, being beginning and end of sterling ripples, I felt as close to her as I could ever get to anything. I thought of the first time we met, of all those years that I had forgotten her, and of all I had learned and dreamt as I saw her shatter and sculpt herself back into immensity. I would have her always, as I dreamt of her, thought of her, sang to her and told her stories of brave heroes and selfless lovers. As I got out of the water, feeling all the coldness of winter and the warmth of my inner summer, I softly told myself, “she’s up there, and I’m down here, with all the mementos of the moon”.