Moonlight, by Phillip Hoyle

The approach of the full moon makes my partner cranky, occasionally not very pleasant at all. We just went through that phase. Now the moonlight is still intense but the mood is changing. I’ve never quite understood these lunar changes, but they’ve been a part of human behavior for millennia. In fact lunacy has its root in Luna, the moon goddess of Rome. And Monday is the ancient day of the moon. At some point I read of a folk tradition that warned not to sleep in the light of the moon, especially on Monday; one might go crazy in doing so. The idea seemed quaint and unlikely to me.

Still I really like those nights when the moon is in its full stage and its reflected light even makes shadows. That light changes the perception of what it illuminates, sometimes sharpening, sometimes soften what I see. The eerie beauty of it has inspired in me some moonlight art with white Prismacolor® pencil and black ink on black paper, white moon and wispy clouds setting off black trees and housetops. I really do like at least some imaginative aspects of moonlight.

As a teenager I began to pick up hints of the moon’s part in romance. Perhaps it was a moonlit autumn night when I drove my new college girlfriend Myrna up to the hilltop parking lot of the Manhattan, Kansas, City Zoo to talk. The night sky was beautiful—bright shining stars and planets overhead, a few clouds on the western horizon, occasional orange lights flashing beneath those clouds from war games being practiced by US Army Units at neighboring Fort Riley, a full moon overseeing it all. I leaned over and kissed Myrna. I don’t know if she meant to (she later claimed she was just nervous), but she bit my earlobe in response to that first kiss. I don’t know if right then a fake bomb went off at the Fort or if the full moon winked, but electricity shot through my body, and I was sure I was in love.

Oh that moonlight!

Now I realize that a culture of romance can convince one of many things. I guess it did that to me, a boy who had seldom felt much deep emotion except when singing classical music, seeing children baptized, or kissing with his boyfriend when he was fifteen lying with him naked in bed. I kissed Myrna that electric night and a few weeks later in public and felt sure we were on our way into a wonderful relationship with marriage, sex, children, and a shared life of meaning and romance. We did enjoy a wonderful marriage, but eventually I did have to pay attention to a sense of love and life beyond what my central Kansas culture had taught, one that seriously altered my perception of moonlit romance. Myrna and I are still friends, even while I have lived with three different men in the past sixteen years. I still like the moonlight even with its unpredictable and confusing glow.

© 6 July 2015

About the Author

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE program “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com