Moon is My Raft

"The moon is a friend for the lonesome to talk." -Carl Sandburg

 As the northeast monsoon winds touch my skin, I stand in awe staring at the moon.  Just like how Neil Armstrong"s footsteps stayed on the moon dust, my sight was fixated.  January 25, 2013...it was a full moon.

Footprint on the moon's surface

     In a world surrounded by contradiction, the moon is my light on a gloomy night.  It's my chiaroscuro, as how I remember my college Humanities professor would always say.  What is in you?  Where are you?  Why are you looking back at me?  These questions which can never be answered are what keep me fascinated with the moon.  Interrogations which lead to imagination.  I can experience in one night what I could not in a century.  The stars are lamp posts, guiding my journey as I traverse the unknown in a millisecond of light years.  I saw the deepest part of Marianas Trench, as well as the highest peaks of the Himalayas.  All these I saw, because the moon is my raft.

Venus and the moon

     The craters are like maps.  They lead me to places I've never been, sceneries I've never seen.  I had been chained on the earth.  Immobilized by deception.  The past imprisoned me, yet I was set free from my dungeon.  The moon gave me my lock keys.  Now, I travel differently because I have a new life.  My pockets are full of hope and my hands full of redemption.  The passenger on the raft had become a new creation.

     Years ago, the moon took me to the Middle East.  There I saw sand dunes, and my father working in a foreign land earning with a foreign currency just so we can have a convenient life.  My eyes were wide open, my consciousness bespoke.  On another occassion, I flew three decades to the past.  I was reunited with my grandfather who used to give me crabs for pets.  I, once again, smelled pomade on his hair and Brutt on his clothes. 

 
     Lately, I have been to an enchanted lake.  I saw a man flashing a smile I can't resist , looking straight at me with a smize.  He held, not just my hand, but also my heart.

     He whispered hello, but I heard poetry. A prose which far exceeds that of Pablo Neruda's.  The lake of enchantment served as a backdrop for our first meeting. It's freshwater was a melting point of excitement while the cold air's an atmosphere of encounter between two cultures too distinct from each other. That moment I was sure...Venus collided with Jupiter.

Venus and Jupiter visible from the sky
"The moving moon went up to the sky, and nowhere did abide; softly she was going up, and a star or two beside.
-Samuel Taylor

 
     Since then, Jupiter never left my mind.  He is with me all the time...in my thoughts, yet I don't know him.

     Someday soon, my moon will bring me back to that lake again.  It might even take me to places unimaginable.  I can't wait 'til I will stare at the moon again.  For now, I will depart from my raft, and face what reality has in store for me.  My soul would feel when I can wander through time again.

"There is nothing you can see that is not a flower; there is nothing you can think that is not the moon." -Matsuo Basho