Carpentrix

What is the moon?

The moon is the lantern in the abdomen of an insect who wants to fuck. The moon is a hill of sheep. The moon is a rock roughed by a surface of barnacles. The moon is the filed tusk of a night mastodon. The moon is a furred spider-egg sac spilling spider stars. The moon is the haunch of a white cow, the haunch of a kneeling horse. The moon is the pouch of a pelican beak flashing full of silver fish. The moon is a crumb of pollen carried on the back leg of a bee. The moon is hydrangean. The moon is aware of the original chaos and the subsequent chaos. The moon is honey, is lemon, is marmalade, is lavender. The moon is garnet, dried blood, stained in the crotch of your underwear. The moon is a tooth whose roots tangle through the great jaw of space. The moon is camouflaging behind the clouds. The moon is never trespassing.

Tonight’s Full Worm Moon brings the finale of my moon series for The Paris Review.

I imagined the men, hungry, gaunt, shadows deepening in the craters of their eyes, getting thinner, getting weaker, and one night lying down together, maybe holding hands in their big moon suit gloves, their lives leaving them. And I imagined the abrasive moondust chewing through their big moon suits, then the flesh of them, so they were bones on the surface of the moon, and I imagined the moon swallowing the bones into itself, as the desert sand absorbs a snakeskin. Their helmets left as headstones. Their bones absorbed into the bone of the moon, until they were made moon themselves.

The Hunger Moon has come and gone, but “The Moon in Full” series continues at the Paris Review.

A QUESTIONNAIRE FOR THE MOON

In general, are you glad to be tethered by gravity to planet Earth? Please circle one:   Yes   No

Is the light you appear to shed made of ghosts? Please circle one:   Yes   No

If you were to describe the smell on your surface, you would use the word(s) (please circle all that apply):

  -Snow     -Black tea     -Dust char on heater when heat is first turned on     -Marshmallow     -Wet nickel     -Lily of the valley     -Basement (damp)     -Bone marrow     -Normal rock     -None of the above

Do you dream? Please circle one:   Yes   No (If yes, please fill out the following)

Do you dream about:   -Contours?     -Falling?     -The horror of arrival?     -Attraction and its many forms?     -Swimming in the laval fields before they were solidified?     -Stairways, elevators, ladders, other means of ascent/descent?     -Icarus, his feathers, his avoidable death, an alternative night flight in which you would’ve seen him soar, would’ve seen him safely to new land?     -Tidal waves, rogue waves, walls of water, flood, rhythm, swell, retreat?     -Mirrors?     -Shoes?     -Blood? 

The Wolf Moon is bright and high, and “The Moon in Full” series continues at the Paris Review.

What does the heart of night have to say? I used to fear that below the shadows were more shadows, a dark so dense its gravity, at some point, would grow inescapable. But the moon opens the night jar of the heart and inside, beneath the layers of fear and shame, lives another form of light. It does not glow like moonlight and it does not shine like sunlight. It is like no light any of us have seen with our eyes, a light like bells. When the moon draws out the shadows it can guide us to this light in the darkest center, in every heart pulse and in every pause that breaks the eternity of a sleepless night. There it is, this light, and it is—can I say it? Why this shame? This light, brave animal, can I say it? It’s love.

The Long Night Moon is rising, and “The Moon in Full” series continues at the Paris Review.

Here on earth it is November. It gets late earlier now. Day routs the shadows and night gathers them back in with broad black-feathered wings. The Beaver Moon glows, reminding us that its longevity is not ours to know. But in secret heated moments we can feel the throb of our aliveness, sensing the aliveness that came before and will come after, the hushed mingling of souls, marking the heart that tries and tries to speak our ageless and ongoing bewilderment.

The Beaver Moon is beaming, and “The Moon in Full” series continues at the Paris Review.

The moon is presumed mute—its silence is the silence of death. But when it does speak, it speaks in the language of shadows. You speak this language, too. It was your first language, our shared first language, the language of the dark. When you can’t scream in nightmares, it is the moon caught in your throat, a bright white rolling marble that garbles the voice, makes it choked and animal. Moonlight smells like chalkboard, like snowcloud, like a rock in the dirt. You can skin it with a glimpse, lay its pelt down by the hearth, and wrap yourself in its furred light. No weapons, no blood. A glimpse as it shifts in time; what a thing to witness, the full moon’s monthly resurrection.

The Hunter’s Moon is up, and “The Moon in Full” series continues at the Paris Review.

The future tugs on us, as the moon does, come what may. In a face, in a shadow, in the overflow of dream life into real life, in all the indistinct places, come what may, come what may, we wander the night gardens of our minds in search of something we can understand. Let’s speak of what we know, and then we’ll see what we hear in the silence.

Flower Moon, supermoon, blood moon. A total lunar eclipse, the closest the moon will be to earth all year, it's all happening tonight. Read all about it -- plus spring fever, pareidolia, and rabbit shadows -- in the second installment of my full moon series for The Paris Review.

May: Flower Moon

Here, the ocean wears all its mirrors on its back, they bring the news that comes in the dream, and tonight, the full moon will be reflected and repeated there, millions of moons bouncing back off millions of mirrors. All the old Aprils are in this April, the well-worn egg-shaped orbit swings us back to budding fizz on trees, to hungry suckling tongues, to the blue dusk blush, everything stirring and sticky with renewal. We can’t stare at the sun. It will char our retinas and take our sight. The moon won’t burn, even at its brightest, we can look and look, the way we look at the faces in dreams, which reflect what we bring, with darkness and emptiness behind them. Tonight, step into the milk-blue dim, get softened in the mothlight, and feel the moon pull on all your fluids and juices.

For the Paris Review, I’m writing a 12-part series tied to each month’s full moon. "The Moon in Full” starts today, with the Pink Moon, which rises tonight.

April: Pink Moon

[Painting: Edvard Munch, Måneskinn (Moonlight), 1895]

Come. Come closer. What now on this longest night? What now as Holly King surrenders and Oak King takes charge? What now as the wheel of the year tips to its lightening side? What now in this season of sorrow? What now as the solstice fire opens a doorway to our secret souls? The soul is thicker in winter, stretched between mind and body, which are, we kept getting told, by MDs and mystics alike, the same thing after all.

What now? Now it’s now it’s now it’s now and we are burning.

Happy Solstice, everyone. The final part of my series on the Winter Solstice for the Paris Review.

In winter, we get inside each other. The erotics of the dark, cold season differ from that of summer—not the flirty, sundressed frolic, not sultry August sweat above the lip, not tan lines or sand in shoes or voluptuous tulips. It’s a different sort of smolder now. Quilted, clutching, we wolve for one another, ice on the puddles and orange glow from windows against deepest evening blue. In summer: lust and laze, days are loose and lasting. In winter: time tightens, night’s wide open, the hunger says right now.

Part Three of my series on the Winter Solstice for the Paris Review.

[Paul Cezanne, Leda and the Swan, c. 1882]

The year is fading. Light is fading. Solstice means sun-stilled. We light candles and raise toasts, we smooch in doorways under strung-up plants, we hang lights along the roofline peaks, give gifts, make wishes, laugh and pray and fear. We bring the light into the earth and try to harness the great forces. It’s a wild sort of stilling, a thrashing frenzied sort of stilling, a stopping of time, a de-metering, a holding of the breath as the tension builds, as the dark expands, until it cracks and light drives in. That’s the hope. The far-off tinkling of bells you hear could be the harness of the reindeer or the bells around the neck of a goat. Hoofbeats on the roof, hoofbeats thudding in the warm and living hollow of your chest. Here in the wild quiet, something in the shadows whispers and you can’t tell if it means you good or ill. Pomegranate, holly branch, birch switch, mistletoe. We’ll leaf with life and pass below the secret places of this earth.

Part Two of my series on the Winter Solstice for the Paris Review.

Loss is in the air. Summer’s juicy verdure gives way to something crisped and husky. The colors dull and the plants fuzz, release last seed, go black. There’s something cruel about it. On a plane some years ago, the stranger strapped in next to me talked about winter in Chicago. “You never been to Chicago in winter?” he said. “I’ve never been to Chicago,” I said. “Well we got a wind so cold we call it the hawk,” he said. It sounded like a mean thing.

Heat slips off, chased by the hawk, and the smolder has to come from within. Winter makes us know the hollows. Darkness creeps in from both sides and pushes us to that pure ridge, all the way exposed. Peer over, scope the abyss. The fear is ancient, part of our human-animal inheritance, the surging fury of survival: will I be warm enough, will I have enough to eat, will it keep getting darker, will the darkness swallow me, will it swallow us all together?

For the Paris Review, I’m writing a four-part series about the Winter Solstice. The first part asks, what’s death in a world of stories?

Inhale the Darkness

For the Paris Review Daily, the second essay in a series on the sky asks, what color is it?

For the Paris Review Daily, I’m writing a six-part series about the sky. The first one asks where does the sky start?

This evening, April 27, at 7 pm, please join me in celebrating the virtual launch of SUMMER SOLSTICE, an expanded version of a series of essays I wrote for the Paris Review Daily, published in a beautiful letterpress edition by the legendary Black Sparrow Press and hosted by the mighty Brookline Booksmith. I’m lucky to be in conversation with author and Paris Review online editor Nadja Spiegelman.

You can register for the event here.

And you can support your favorite local bookstore and buy a copy here through Indiebound.

Here’s to calm and health and the seasons continuing to unfold.

Continuing to keep it light for Part Three of my series on the summer solstice for the Paris Review.

[Painting: Ein Sonntag by Max Pechstein]

“November holds the in-between. Between warmth and cold, between light and dark, between living and dying. The eleventh month, getting darker, getting colder, echoes our own eventual winding down and gives chance to live in the richest, deepest way.”

For these extended evenings, on darkness and quiet and the Japanese concept of ma. The second installment of my Novemberance column for the Paris Review.