A Walk Around the Moon
written by: Michael Graeme
Sun and Moon in Leo. A misty dusk, first crescent rising over far hills as we make camp by the round eye of a nameless, reedy tarn. Why nameless? I suppose because it’s not always there, at least no one else seems able to find it, and if the very existence of a thing is contested, why bother naming it? Still, we gather water, fresh enough, and as the stars come out, we brew tea.
Darius removes his boots, lifts the insoles, lets them breathe. In country like this, he says, it’s your boots that make the difference between heaven and hell, yet most travellers pay them little attention. Then he points out the brighter stars, orients us in time and season, gazes long at Mars, just rising, its reddish glow a reminder of the brutality of our excesses: the red mist, the call to arms, even our arrogant belief in the meaninglessness of things: moths fluttering in erratic flight, drawn to our flame, while bats hunt the moths, and an owl hunts the bats. An ouroboric cycle of one thing eating the other, until nothing remains.
All is silence. And Saturn, with his book closed, and his gate shut firm, and all because we see no further than our noses. Maybe this time round we’ll tempt his indulgence.
It was, once upon a time, an anxious night, this first night of the moon, a fiery energy robbing us of sleep, and then that irresistible urge to be underway. I suppose this later mellowness is a sign of wisdom, or old age, or both, I don’t know. Darius smiles, silent watcher that he is, reading minds, and knowing more than he lets on.
Our first objective is visible in silhouette, though fast fading now into the black of a velvet night: The Hill of Noon, four days across the moor – and a prominent summit cairn to tempt our rushing at it. But how many have died on that one hill alone? How many have burned themselves out in the achievement of it, only to witness from the top other hills rising beyond, one after the other, ever taller, and each with its own crowning glory?
How many years was I in realising the cairns aren’t worth a damn? You cross the hill if you have to, use the cairns for navigation when the ways turn misty, but as things in themselves? There are better ways to channel that martial energy, and we’ll have need of it for sure if we’re to keep going, if we’re to complete this lunation. But Mars is a fool un-tempered – and he neglects his boots.
I trace a circle round the tent to keep the night ghouls away from my dreaming, then put out the lamp and await the dawn.
Patience comes not easily to youth, nor even at times to old age. But four days afoot and nothing but the same view ahead isn’t something impetuousness can mend. It’s a question, I suppose, of tuning in to the more intimate details: the moor all about is beautiful just now, and rewards a close attention – scent of heather, the burbling call of curlew as they circle, then the high twittering cadences of the larks. And, now and then, a grouse, chuck-chucking, and the grey ghosts of the men who stalk them.
Darius trails behind at times. When we first hooked up, I thought him too old for the journey, but I soon discovered he could walk all day, and all night if need be, all weathers too. Indeed, during those less propitious times, when the wind’s blowing, and the hail’s coming horizontally, stinging your face, it’s the steadiness of Darius that goes on ahead, undaunted, while I tuck in behind, meek and trusting. But with the weather so fair as this, and the promise of a clear crossing, it’s hard not to respond to that feeling of a spring in your step. There seems to be a crispness to the vision, too, and a freshness to the air. How can one suppress the urge to make way while the going is so good?
But I take his point. I too saw Mercurius on the ecliptic last night. Fleet of foot, always coming up behind you. Even in his brighter aspects, he would not be beyond leading us up to our chests in a bog.
Each night we set camp among the heather, and I draw my circle round the tent. Darius does not sleep, but vanishes into the night as my dreams come on. He knows of other places that fade in and out, farmsteads that vanished from the maps long ago, but which are still real to him, and provide welcome. I sometimes wonder if he will tire of my company in favour of his own kind, but come morning, he’s always there, brewing tea, frying bacon he has somehow conjured up in the night.
I never ask about his sources, and he never tells.
So, four days in the crossing, the final climb, and we pitch up on the summit, well away from the cairn. Ten feet tall and piled high with the inscribed stones of many a life’s labour, there is still a chance I will be seduced by it. And ahead of us now, the valley – just filling with a faint mistiness. And the light, of course. Always the lone prick of light, and the ring around it, and the siren glow. But this is no Jack-o-lantern – none of those old tricks – but a warmth and a sweetness of welcome, and a cottage with roses round the door.
Darius sees me looking, senses my unease.
“We could always go around it,” I tell him. “No need to call. Is there?”
He shrugs. It’s my journey after all, but I know what he means. Sure, there are many who have entered there never to be seen again, and some who emerged years later, mad as hares. Others with that bliss upon them men sometimes mistake for the kiss of angels, only to wake back in their tents at first slice of moon, and with a loneliness upon them like a raging thirst.
As the night comes on, we have the swelling moon, then Mars and Mercurius already in play. And now, above the cottage, the lone light of Venus, a mirrored image among the stars. But unlike the stars, she’s a steady light, sometimes false, sometimes true, sometimes a guide around the shoals and reefs. Sometimes a lure to doom.
Oh, I’ve lost myself there often enough, took what was offered for a lover, thinking it the only game. Consummation in a feathered bed and seeing in the dawn, propped against soft pillows with the sound of a woman singing downstairs. The song of the Fae. And each time she was happy to lead me that way, to hold me forever. And forever I would have let her.
Other times, I let her go, only then to walk away in regret, to seek her beauty and her caress again. I have sought her traces on the hill-tops, one after the other, until I dropped to my knees, exhausted by the love that comes upon me whenever I think of her.
A welcoming light in the deep valley, a lone woman, and a bed for the night? What man has not dreamed of such a thing? What man has not mistaken the divine, and made of it something profane?
Come morning, she meets me at the gate, older now – as I am older – but still possessed of an unsurpassed allure, at least to my eyes, since it is my eyes that seek it. And then that irradiation with the source of a profound love – life blood of the universe itself – catching in the throat, momentarily arresting breath. She smiles her welcome, but sees the change in me, and mirrors it. I look around for Darius, but he has melted away.
Some sections of the path, he says, must be walked alone.
We take tea in the garden, heady with a scent of rose and lavender. There are fine china cups and saucers, a past gentility, speaking of the warmth of family, of deep ancestry. She asks about my life, since last I walked this way, and I tell of what I can remember, which always seems a little less each time. It is as if maturity is more of a forgetting than an accumulation of anything, that each time we pass, we must travel a little lighter, and trust more in what we find along the way.
We talk long, and not once is there an offer of her bed, nor do I hint for it, though I know it shall be granted if I do. But my weakness now is only for her company, my sadness only for the counting of the suns, and the march of the moon through Leo to the cusp of Virgo. And then it’s the knowing I must leave her, and the knowledge there can be such love in the world, while the fates insist it be forever a mystery unresolved.
On the fourth day, she walks with me, up the hill, beyond the cottage. It’s greener here, not so wild as the moor. There are hedgerows and blackbirds, and though it was dawn when we set out and we seem not to have gone a mile, already there’s a gathering of dusk, and long shadows racing ahead, hurrying us to an end I am not yet ready to meet. Only her presence steadies me, fills me with a sense of the divine as she guides me along the meadow paths. Though the way be strange, from here I shall not need to draw circles around my dreams. From here, Venus alone shall watch over me.
From the hilltop, we gaze down into a vale already steeped in darkness, and over which a moon is riding high, nearing full. Luna in all her silvery glory: The Valley of the Moon, and another four days afoot, travelling the long pass where the sun never rises, and where the way is as strange as dreams. She bids me go well, and I take with me her parting embrace, breathe it in, take it deep inside, to a place I might return in times of need.
The path leads down into a wide vale, the silvery night dominated by a moon, neither ominous nor kind, but radiant with a growing, ambivalent energy. I feel it probing, too, sensing my direction, my desires, that it might grant the dreams accordingly. I wish Darius were here, but he never walks this place, unless it is in my dreams, which I admit is somewhat confusing. But that’s the way it is here, a way that is both travelled and dreamed at the same time. A vale of dreams.
Trees in the moonlight, second-glanced, then gone; a stony path that is also a river to be crossed. It is not a place of living, more a grand stage set of possibilities, of dreams half dreamed and then abandoned. They are my own dreams, perhaps, from the times I’ve passed this way before, and don’t remember – indeed, that I may have been in a hurry to forget. Sometimes I even see the shades of my own longing, my own regrets whispering as we pass by on the trail. Oh, yes, it’s all here, all of it preserved, this rural suburb of the underworld, the edge of death, waiting to be acknowledged, to be owned.
And ruins, so many ruins. They cast gaunt shadows in the hard light, fortifications, long fallen, old libraries, former places of learning, and torn books, torn papers, all dusty now, faded writings of things forgotten, long before they made sense of. We block it out, this place, and no wonder. But if we can open ourselves to even the smallest slice of it, there are guides who will see us through.
“A penny for your thoughts.”
It’s a little girl, wan-faced, dressed in sombre mourning. She holds out her hand, and in her palm there nestles, not a penny, but a silver coin – silver like the moon, the calling card of Mercurius. Should I trust her? How can one not trust the innocent?
“I was wondering if I was lost,” I tell her.
“Well, it depends where you’re going.”
“The trail leads through all this strangeness,” I tell her, as indeed it does – a flinty trail, sparkling as if scattered with diamonds. “Will you walk with me a little way?”
She takes my hand, and we walk. I know her now. She is my own blood, and she is in mourning for me. I am comforted by it.
There is no dawn, no dusk to mark the days here, and there’s an elasticity to time: a passing day in a heartbeat, or an entire epoch in a footstep, marking the rise and fall of civilisations, indeed the drift of continents. And always the steady moon and its ambivalent energy, growing, swelling to full, then the first turn of an imperceptible attenuation.
Strangeness, acceptance, occasional jewels of insight – nothing revelatory, just glimmerings of something stirring, carried aloft by optimism, and the comfort of that little hand in mine.
At length, she stops and points ahead to where the darkness thins and the sun rises on a greening vale, and where a figure waits: Darius. And behind him, suspended in an azure sky, the faint disk of a stately Jupiter, and its own string of jewelled moons. I feel its blessing at once, and a sense of horizons widening. Darius greets me, and we walk on. I look back for the girl, but she has already faded into the dream, into myth – long years, decades, centuries gone.
Darius knows the drill. We make camp at the first welcoming glade. He brews tea, and I spend the day in meditation. And as I meditate, I unseal the package in which I wrapped that parting embrace of Venus, and soar a while upon its wings.
Unlike the Valley of the Moon, vale of dreaming, this place is so alive, so fertile with possibility. It is a deeply measured springtime of the soul. A kestrel hovers nearby, and a hare bounds across the way. A sparkling waterfall tumbles, chuckling into a lively stream. After such darkness and longing, and deep, deep strangeness, things begin to feel possible again, and there comes over me a quiet sense of the sheer nobility of being.
Darius reminds me to take care of my boots – the difference between heaven and hell.
He’s telling me to remain grounded. He’s cautioning me that hints of paradise and divine blessings tempt hubris, and we still have a way to go. Four days, and another distant hill, the highest point of our journey, visible just now, but so often locked in cloud and belonging more to the sky than the earth, and there the refuge and the pillared shrine for offerings to the gods.
It comes to me then I might have made passage through the Valley of the Moon too quickly, for it is from the depth of dreams that there come our most valuable insights. And by recognising them, acknowledging them, we offer them back in gratitude. But I can remember no dreams, unless all of it was a dream. Then I remember the coin the girl gave me, and retrieve it from my pocket.
Silver with the emblem of an eagle on one side, a thunderbolt on the other – these are the tributes to Jove, mark of the Unified Field, of all that is dreamed, and lived and loved into being. Things fall into place. We don’t know how, and it’s best not to question them.
The going is easy, the way is clear, the nights are warm. My dreams are of widening horizons and an expansion of consciousness, so that everywhere I look, I am. We climb the hill on the last day, as the moon prepares its transit from Pisces into Leo. I leave my token on the high altar, among all the others from the many pilgrims who have passed this way before us. Then Darius and I descend just a little way to the mountain hut, where a girl in Bavarian costume serves us beers and a hearty meal.
Darius is quiet. Yes… He’s always quiet, but to varying degrees and meanings, and his meaning now is one of caution.
“I know,” I tell him. He nods. He knows I know. But I am always heady with altitude here, and he knows also my habit of running ahead of myself, of spoiling things at the last minute, thinking I understand something, and then losing it all when the tables are turned and nothing left to hold onto. None of this is for understanding. It is simply the path we must walk.
I sleep on clean sheets that night, and in the morning look out from my balcony upon the vale below. It is already aglow with the sun, and a growing sense of clarity in the true nature of things, and in the feeling I am beginning at last to grasp some meaning in my journey. Yes, that’s the nature of the Vale of the Sun, and though it seems to smile upon us, glowing promises of revelation from every hillside and meadow, something in the memory of my parting embrace with the beauty of Venus grants perspective.
It is a reminder the eternal patterns are of such abstraction that they are beyond cognition, that the only abiding truth we can hold and name is that which we already carry. Love, yes, but without object, and characterised by a sense of melancholy and deep longing, the engine of the heart-mind, the motive energy behind all things.
Darius bides with me as we travel the vale. The sun is a revelation, painting all things with such richness, I pray I shall always remember the world as being this way. And the nights come fresh and warm, and we sleep out on cushions of aromatic heather, waking each morning to the sound of bees buzzing around our heads.
Four days, and the way comes down at last to the rickety old town where no one speaks our language, and where the ways are many, and all the signposts have been removed. And somewhere across this place, the gate. And Saturn with his book.
Darius already feels it. It catches up with me more slowly, as the memory of previous journeys filters through. We find a pavement cafe and sit down, making ourselves understood by gesture that we are in need of coffee. The waiter, a jovial man with an elaborately curly moustache and a white apron, cracks a joke, gestures to the sky – something about the weather, I suppose. Then he goes to fetch our coffee. It is a shy waitress who brings it, but not coffee. Instead, she brings tea in a silver pot, and with fine china cups that put me in mind of that timeless heart-to-heart at the cottage of warm welcome. And in the mirror polish of the teapot, I see a caricature of myself, an eyebrow raised. Even when you know it’s coming, it never fails to surprise.
Darius shrugs. I smile, thank the girl, and we drink the offering of Mercurius in good humour. The devil in all revelation comes when we take ourselves too seriously. The moon is in Sagittarius now – just a few days before she goes back into the dark. We have made good time at least. I hold my cup out to Darius by way of a toast, and we chink them together.
The waiter appears once more, cracks another joke, gestures again to the cloudless sky. And though we do not understand, we laugh with him, for that’s his way and he has an infectious good humour. Laugh with him, and at yourself, and he remains your friend. Rail against the madness of it, and he will darken, and then this labyrinthine town of tight little alleyways and stairways, and spiral ways to nowhere, will swallow you down forever.
Darius attempts a gesture: meaning, which way to the gate? The waiter smiles, nods, and points. It could be another trick, but we drink up and follow his directions anyway.
The gate is not a gate at all, but one of those old works’ clocking machines, and a grand old clock tick-tocking, with a yawning aperture for your ticket, which I don’t think I’ve got, but naturally Darius, guardian of the way, produces it from his pocket. Old Saturn turns out to be a sleepy man in a post office uniform. He sits in a booth by a turnstile. I put my ticket in the slot, and the clock punches me out. Then I push through the turnstile and into the street of awakening, where I parked my car so long ago now I can barely remember.
Time of departure and arrival, another circuit of the moon, from dark to dark again. I sleep well that night and dream deeply, something different about me, though I can’t say what. So many nights and days the same old thing, until once more I wake to starlight by that nameless reedy tarn, and the scent of Darius frying bacon, reading the sky and reminding me about my boots.
The difference between heaven and hell.
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