The Moon, The Moon

Photo by Abdullah Ahmad on Unsplash

 

Warren and I went to see Macbeth last night, which the OWU Theater Department was staging. Macbeth is my very favorite work by Shakespeare and I was excited to see it performed live.

Yesterday was a rainy, cold, gray day. Before going to the play, we ran an errand nearby, getting in and out of the car quickly. Clouds were scudding overhead and both of us, looking up into the darkening sky, said, almost simultaneously, "There's the moon." 

And indeed, there was the moon, well on its way to a full moon next week, hazy behind a scrim of clouds. 

As Warren knows well, I am drawn to the moon: not as an astronomical feature, not as an astrological predictor, but just because it is the moon. I have been tracking it in the sky for decades, seeing it in its different phases from various points from the east coast to the west coast, but mostly from my own backyard.

I love the moon.

Shakespeare noted the moon more than once in his works. The one most quoted is when Romeo prepares to swear his love to Juliet by the moon and she admonishes him:

O, swear not by the moon, th'inconstant moon,

That monthly changes in her circled orb,                      

Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.

October's full moon was a super moon, rising even larger and brighter than a regular full moon, because the moon was closer to the earth than usual. In writing to my friend Tani, I referenced Juliet's lines and said that if ever there was a teenager's naive statement, it was hers. The moon inconstant? The one thing the moon is, "in her circled orb," is very constant. Yes, the moon changes its phases, but it is always, always constant.

It is not coincidence that both the Jewish and the Muslim calendar are lunar calendars. 

As we exited the play last night, the night was darker and colder. (The theater was cold too, so both of us were chilled even before we opened the exit door.)  We were parked within a half block of the theater, and the walk was cold, wet, and mercifully short. All the same, before we got into the car, we both looked up and once again saw the moon, misty and hazy, but all the same there.

In Act 2, Scene 1 of Macbeth, Fleance says to his father, "The moon is down." 

It wasn't last night.