Yesterday was Earth Hour Day across the globe. It started in Sydney, Australia, and coincides with National Dark Sky Week in the U.S. It only requires turning off electric lights and other nonessential appliances from 8 to 9 p.m. on March 29.
We turned off everything except the coffeemaker (essential appliance) and ate dinner by candlelight. It was strange and refreshing not to have any light or noise, to hear the city pulsating in the background and navigate the dark rooms with candles, as in an emergency or blackout.
By candlelight I read Moon Lore, a handsomely designed hardcover book that is part of The Moon Box, published by Chronicle Books. Moon Lore is one of four volumes; the other three are The Were-Wolf, The Moon Goddess and Somnium. Edited by John Miller and Tim Smith, the books are richly illustrated with small blue images from sources ranging from Assyrian times to old French texts and Sicilian coins. The Moon Lore volume includes folktales from South Africa and Tibet, as well as poems by Denise Levertov, Erica Jong and William Blake, fiction by Italo Calvino, and "Moon Gardening of the Pennsylvania Dutch" among other lunology. I got this for a steal at $4 at Strange Maine. (By the way, there's a great unrelated blog of the same name written by a remarkable local artist and lorist.)
I love the anonymous moon haiku included in the book:
The moon's in mid-heaven;
I wander
Through poor streets.
The summer moon shines
On transient dreams
In the octopus pot.
The next morning I had vivid dreams. In one of them I was rowing a small boat, using a spatula for an oar, which actually worked. Later I listened to "Star-Child" and "Mundus Canis" from George Crumb's Birthday Album ad Amnesiac by Radiohead. I drew the picture you see here and wrote the following poem:
Moon Lore
bitter bright unyielding
heart tome
silver spell trove
frozen sleigh bells
fine white ropes
from root to vein
old fear bones
and marigold scars
ocean dusk wine brine
sea horse skies
magic lantern
of demigods
