blame it on the moon

it is just so right outside tonight. there's a hint of coolness in the air, a breeze, pleasant smells and a bright moon behind those wispy clouds that makes the night sky more blue somehow.


the moon tonight does not look like this moon up here, but when i was looking for tonight's moon i found this one. the big orange moon is by far my favourite.

who knows if the moon's

who knows if the moon's
a baloon,coming out of a keen city
in the sky--filled with pretty people?
(and if you and i should

get into it,if they
should take me and take you into their baloon,
why then
we'd go up higher with all the pretty people

than houses and steeples and clouds:
go sailing
away and away sailing into a keen
city which nobody's ever visited,where

always
it's
Spring)and everyone's
in love and flowers pick themselves

--e.e. cummings, & (1925)

tonight's moon looks more like that one right up there. still, pretty damn nice. it was a moon like this that inspired one of my father's paintings. he painted a viking ship on a sea under a moon with rows and rows of clouds. it has hung in my parents' bedroom my entire life. horribly framed, with perhaps too vivid color, little-to-no perspective and of an odd-size it's the kind of painting you'd see going for cents at many a garage sale. should it ever pass into my hands; however, i will treasure it always. it is exactly the right painting to hang in the bedroom of the parents of a child whose favourite book is The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

with memories of a quite right painting on a quite right night lit by quite nice moonlight, i decided it must be the evening to sit down and search out the picture of perfection. i don't know if i've ever stated it plainly enough, but there is one image that moves me more than any. to my eye, this sight is the picture of contentment, underlit with anticipation and utterly alive with whispers of hope and a strange quiver of longing. it makes my heart ache deliciously, my belly warm, and my mind hungry and full. and i get to see it all the time. here it is:


thank you to jeff werner for taking this photo. it is "Night fog on Doncaster Street, Victoria, as seen through the broken rays of a street lamp behind a tree". wouldn't you just know that my favourite sight was captured in victoria, british columbia.