When the moon came around…
Back in the winter of 1969, the year after I graduated from high school, I went on a road trip with some pals. This was my first big adventure without my parents calling the shots. In addition to myself, the crew consisted of Kenny Wolf, who was my best friend from high school, along with Kenny’s good buddy and roommate at Farleigh Dickinson, David Bennett, while at the wheel was Kenny’s older brother Terry. We were heading for Miami in Terry’s gargantuan Ford LTD. It had a good radio that picked up the local stations along the way. Additionally, Terry had installed an 8-track tape player with box speakers. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, we only had four tapes. All four were albums by the Moody Blues — Days of Future Past. In Search of the Lost Chord. On the Threshold of a Dream. To Our Children’s Children. Truth be told, there was not one among us who did not fall under their spell. It was something that we shared — like them we yearned to understand our place in this bizarre and astounding universe.
As we bombed through the Georgia night in the LTD we talked about what it means to be alive. We discussed God and law and art and nature. We were animated by wonder. Through all of this Terry never surrendered the wheel and none of us ever requested it.
Well, eventually we arrived in Miami, where we planned to spend several days. After about three hours we regrouped and simultaneously said, “We’ve got to get the hell out of here.” We walked back to Terry’s car, got out a road map, and spread it out on the hood. And there it was — Key West.
We headed south on highway A1A and hit the islands. This was in 1969, many years ago and although it’s hard to believe now, but back then some of the Keys were uninhabited. We found one in the middle of the night. It had a dirt road through a swamp down to the beach, and there we set up shop.
Kenny and David stretched out their blankets and lay with their feet to the ocean. I opted to lay out above their heads, parallel to the shore, to better participate in the impending discussions. Terry was putting the speakers on the roof of the LTD for a Moody Blues serenade when suddenly we heard horrid sounds coming from the swamp, like the hideous cackling of a madman.
So, there we were. What else could we do? With a single flashlight among us, we formed a cluster — a pathetic phalanx clutching at each other as we slogged and tripped our way into the swamp in the direction of the cacophony. We stumbled into a dark clearing and there before us was a large, weather-beaten chicken coop. A fox darted away in the beam of our flashlight. The noise quickly abated.
Somehow we found our way back to the LTD and the deserted beach. Soon my compadres were fast asleep, but I could not shut down. I was stretched out on my side, on the berm, parallel to the horizon, looking out to sea, when the most incredible thing happened.
The moon came around.
And I mean that exactly. From my reclining perspective the moon did not come up; it came around. As it always does. There it was, a huge sphere of coalesced rock out in the void of empty space, suspended in lock step with this bigger sphere, from where I witnessed these stunning machinations.
For a way-too-brief-and-way-too-overpowering moment I completely comprehended it all. Fundamentally, down to my core, I grasped that the moon’s brilliance is merely the reflection of a solar furnace that holds us in its thrall and the moon’s crescent shape was our shadow. And this star is only one of untold gazillions scattered across infinity, and that everything is spinning in space like the gears of an eternal clock that has no beginning or end. This realization, of course, was overwhelming and I passed out.
When I regained consciousness, the moon was hovering well over the ocean, shimmering, as if in a halfhearted apology. Or mocking me?
For the rest of my life I’ve tried to reconstruct this moment, drag it back out of its hole. I’ve embraced drugs, literature, religion, science, love, logic, and booze. All in vain.