Even though we were told the moon was disappearing, we suddenly saw it everywhere. It was on posters, in the papers, and on television channels. The headlines were inescapable: Moon Leaving Earth’s Orbit. Newsagents shouted it in the streets and you’d overhear it in passing conversations. We didn’t know when or why the moon was leaving us. We would look out of our windows and there she’d be, in the sky where she’d always been, seemingly unaware that she had become the novelty of the decade. She was the headliner, the main attraction, the newest thing, and yet, to the naked eye she hadn’t changed at all. The moon looked the same as it always had.
Yet on earth, the prices of telescopes quickly went up. People climbed mountains and towers to get a closer look at her, almost as if we thought we could witness her departure. We became a society of moon-gazers. But, as day by day we watched her from our rooftops, nothing seemed to change. The moon waxed, and she waned, but she had always done that. The uproar died down eventually, and soon everything returned to normal.
Until the day an Italian philosopher rowed out to sea. He said afterwards that the easiest way to follow the moon is by boat, for nowhere does she seem closer than out upon the waters. He was the first to notice that the moon had shrunken.
Of course, no one could prove it. The mathematicians and the astronomers did their calculations, yet their math could not convince them. Across the nations, people raised their thumbs to the night sky. The moon had shrunken, and nothing could convince them otherwise.
So, it was that the world became obsessed with the moon. It was as if now that we knew that she was leaving the world had rediscovered her vitality to the sky; almost as though we had forgotten that she had been there all along.
Never-the-less, the world came together; scientists, inventors, scholars, explorers, and philosophers; masterminds and visionaries of all sorts band-together with but one ambition: to figure out how to convince the moon to stay.
The first to attempt it was a Russian physicist who believed that the best way to retrieve the moon was by strengthening the earth’s gravitational pull. Rumors circulated about the possibilities of magnetic power. A couple of documentaries were filmed and for a time this convinced the people that the problem would be solved.
But, as more and more moon-gazers took to the sea, people quickly became aware that the ocean’s tides were falling. Things only got worse after that.
The next to hit the headlines was a French inventor. Sketches of blueprints were released of a preposterous contraption designed to reel the moon back into the earth’s orbit. A commotion of stories followed.
Though word of the French inventor soon disappeared, extremists and enthusiasts of all sorts endeavored to construct the Frenchmen’s invention. Technicians, Architects and Carpenters attempted to build the device. Everyone wanted to be remembered as the person who had saved the moon.
For a while, this society of innovators took over the news. Stories were heard of people climbing the Eiffel Tower in an attempt to lass the moon. But, as the stories became more and more absurd, the Frenchmen’s scandal was soon forgotten.
The world continued as normal for a time. But the story of the moon’s flight soon resurfaced when a German Astro-photographer snapped a shot of her in her full form, a photograph which he claimed was proof of her departure.
Once again, the moon seemed to have shrunken right before our eyes.
Scientists no longer tried to disprove that the moon was leaving after that, though whether that was because the Astro-Photographer’s photograph had convinced them or whether they had decided it was best to ignore the upheaval no one really knew.
But, as the scientists stepped away, the artists took over. A sensation of works followed of which the moon was the latest inspiration. She became a prodigy, a monument of art.
The first to captivate the audiences with their moon-work spectacle was an English playwright who had written a play about a poet who built a ladder atop mount Everest and used it to climb to the moon.
Not long after, circuses started advertising acrobats who could swing into the night sky and funambulists who slung lines to the moon. Dancers waltzed on the moon and artists painted her. A composer released a rhapsody of lullabies inspired by her. Sonnets and nursery rhymes were written. Filmmakers released features about her, and a Spanish chef created a concoction known as moon-cheese.
But the funny thing is, in all the hustling and bustling, people stopped looking at the moon again. She was still there for all to see, yet people were too busy to notice her.
The last piece of moon-art I ever saw was a mural painted on the side of an observatory depicting the moon breaking free from its bounds of nooses and chains and forces of magnetic power. Under it was written in broad letters Free the Moon.
The moon never did end of leaving, and yet, somehow, we lost her still. Though the mural was painted over a few days later, I can still see visibly in my mind’s eye the image of the moon drifting off into space like a great balloon, finally liberated from her shackles. Sometimes when the moon peeks into my bedroom window late in the evening I cannot help but wonder why it is that she decided to stay.
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