diary iii — november considerations
in which We seek not to be Understood but Acknowledged
i did not enjoy the eclipse.
understand, it is not that i did not enjoy the eclipse. i just also did not enjoy it.
there is nothing so special to me about the Long Dance of the satellites. i am far more impressed by the ancestor’s silvery glow than the Moon’s awkward shadow. when that corona glittered in the sky i did not cry or think much other than, oh good! it’s working.
all around me were infatuated by the eclipse, wanted to suck the Sun’s shadowy dick.
not i.
i said: no wonder we used to think it was the gods’ work, this funny little incident of Gravity.
now, we know what it is and it is not so impressive.
no, it isn’t. but i did watch it.
i love some who did not watch the eclipse because it is impolite to watch two lovers.
i don’t mind being a cosmic cuck, and nor did most of the folk in the places that could see the lovers take their gloomy cuddle before parting.
what i loved were the living feeds of the Moon’s shadow on the face of the Earth. i loved how small it made america seem. i Loved Her Great Shadow on the face of Our Earth.
in may, before the eclipse, i had watched the ancestor’s dance. that was a sight. heavens, was that A Sight. and throughout the Summer i saw four shooting stars and a comet and bits of the meteor showers. i watched the flowers bloom and the trees explode and the Small Things live their small innocuous living.
We are all of Us insignificant.
the Sun’s casual encounter with the Moon is nothing special to me. but nothing really is these days.
i wanna see the Moon’s lit up backside. i wanna see Her dark side bright. that is marvellous to me. show me what the Moon feels during an eclipse. we have spoken of the Sun enough.
i do not see them either so often these days. the Sun is lost to me: i have seen Him only once or twice a week and never in His utter glory imbibing the hills and hollows with that Utter-mirth, that quiet glory, His effortless magic. i do not see Him this way now. and the Moon is likewise lost at night to Us. i feel Her light but i cannot see it and so i cannot be sure it is truly there. i cannot know which makes me sadder: to have lost the Sun’s make or to know not where the Moon may become. i miss them both.
it has been raining for the Whole of November. the clouds are masking the light, the rain suffocates what remains of the Summer. tomorrow, or beyond, it may all grow pale and cold and hard like stone and seashells. my Island will look like the dark side of the Moon made bright by the Sun’s Mighty Love:
grey on grey on white and not a flower in sight — small cold space of earth
that is what it will be like. and they hate it, so many i’ve known and know and will know. but, it’s insignificant to me. i am not even there.
who in all this wide small planet will ever know and love as i do?
the scent of the cosmos is pale compared to my musk
who in all the glittering grey will think of the winter as Love?
there is a dire delightful charm to the bitter cold where the Sun cannot be.
it is like the dark side of the Moon when She is not being railed.
most of the time, She is not being railed, and knows not the Sun.
of course, dear callous Reader, i know there is no ‘dark side’ to the Moon. she is loved at intervals, like Us most. if it bothers the rational mind, then consider it allusion or metaphor and see how far that excels your reason.
perhaps i envy the eclipse somehow. perhaps there is something there i know i cannot grasp, some ancient reverence i know has caused a genocide. perhaps i hate the Sun or i do not like to see the Moon be raped. perhaps i do not enjoy the disquiet of the animals who cannot understand the insignificance of Their uncouth parley. perhaps i wrote all this to waste your time like we wasted so much time in april on an inglorious and unremarkable happenstance of rhythm and motion.
there is nothing so significant as the realization of an abiding insignificance that ensconces all the Life and Love of Earth—remember This. all romance and time is an illusion sold to you by Big Existence to advance the contradictions of desire and reality. the old Romantics new this, as Will often says. i dream of a New Romance that enables us to differentiate between reason and reverence and recognize that the each of us is better off alone.
but, i say this as i miss my love who is gone also. perhaps that is my privilege: i have lost what i had to lose and so nothing now of me worth caring for remains. and so i care for no thing, no body, and no one. all that remains is the love that extends from a faith in the meaningless undoing of Everything. i am accountable.
some would read these words and consider me a sage. others may consider me a nihilist or a savage or a pedant or a mad-mad-madman-woman-man-thing. i am none of these: they will still call me willa.
i did not enjoy the eclipse. it is the shadow overpassing the shadow and oppressing the silence with Something. i prefer the quiet of Unknowing. ten thousand things all become One and there is no mirth or marvel left, only Love. the Kingdom is within me.
i do not know why You all bare the weight of Caring So Goddamn Much. i have no faith or hope in anything but this: a spider has more philosophy than Man.
that is All.
good night, loving Reader. i hope you come to find all the romance of Earth as disquieting as i have.
— wb