Skip to main content

The Heavens lay open and the Moon was full.

 


The heavens lay open and the Moon was full, and the clock had just struck nine. With friends I'd spent the evening at Clamard, near Paris, where Monsieur de Guigy, seigneur of that place, generously regaled us, and now together we passed our journey in quiet contemplation of that saffron ball in the sky. 

We drowned our eyes in the great star before us, which looked to us our attic window opening into heaven, to another perhaps the shining dish in which Diana dressed Apollo's curls, to yet another as if the Sun, having taken off and put away its rays for the day, peered down at us through a window, to see what we are up to when it is not around. 

But I - say I - I who want to stir my fantasies into your own, I believe, and not frivolously as you believe, to tickle time along, I believe the Moon is a world like ours, and our world is a moon to theirs. 

Some of my company loosed great gales of laughter.

Quite so, but perhaps they look at us and make fun of the one who says ours here is a world like theirs. 

I assured them this was the opinion of many learned heads, but alas, this only moved them to further fits. 

However, this brave notion appealed to me, and its contradiction only strengthened my conviction. For the rest of the journey, then, I plunged deep down into it, so deep my belly swelled with a thousand ideas regarding the Moon to which I could not yet give birth. 

So earnestly did I entertain this burlesque that I almost accepted it myself, so persuasive was my reasoning. But, I don't know, call it miracle or happenstance, Providence or Fortune, vision, fiction, chimera or delusion, what you will; fact is, the opportunity presented itself for me to embark upon this Discourse you now read. 


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

She called the Devil by the Name of Bunne: The Faversham Witches (1645).

  The Examination, Confession, Trial and Execution of Joan Williford,  Joan Cariden and Jane Holt.  Who were executed  at Faversham in Kent for being Witches, on Monday the 29. of September, 1645. Being a true copy of their evil lives and wicked deeds, taken by the Mayor of Faversham and jurors for the said inquest. With the examination  and confession of Elizabeth Harris, not yet executed. All attested  under the hand of Robert Greenstreet, Mayor of Faversham. London, Printed for J.G. October 2. 1645. The Confession of Joan Williford, Septemb. 24. 1656, made before the Mayor, and other jurates. She confessed that the Devil about seven years ago did appear to her in the shape of a little dog, and bid her to forsake God and lean to him. Who replied, that she was loath to forsake him. She confessed also that she had a desire to be revenged upon Thomas Letherland and Mary Woodrofe,  now his wife. She further said that the Devil promised her that she shoul...

Se riza el aire gris.

  The field of olives opens and closes like a fan. Above the grove the sky is sunk the rain is dark the stars are cold.  A trembling in the rushes and darkness falls on the riverbank. A ripple through the grey air.  Olive trees laden with screams. A flock  of captive birds move their long, long tails in the shadows.  FGL (1931) PSY (Feb. 2025)

If the Fox was merry and glad, it was no wonder.

  Always I prayed God that he would keep our King in worship and good health and grant him long life but I thought well if my father held his treasure he should with his false fellows well find the way  that the King should be deposed and set aside I was sore bethought how I might best know where my father's goods lay I awaited at all times as nigh as I could in woods in bushes in fields where my father laid his eyes were it by night or by day cold or wet I was always by him to espy and know where his treasure was laid on a time I lay down all pat on the ground and saw my father come running out of a hole now hark  what I saw him do when he came out of the hole he looked fast about if anybody had seen him and when he could  nowhere no one see he stopped the hole with sand and made it even and plain like to the ground by he knew not that I saw it and where his footspore stood there striked he with his tail and made it smooth with his mouth that no man should espy it l...