2002-05-01 - 2:56 PM
They announced that morning their plans for destroying the moon. Of course, they did not say "destroy" -- their faces pulled apart into smiles like grilled cheese sandwhiches, and it was eloquently explained to the gaping public that one side of the moon was "broken", and they wanted to perform a bit of surgery on it...with a fifty ton laser.
At nights, the moon, bright white and deleriously round, clung to the sky, a single raindrop wavering, vibrating, threatening to spill over, leaving behind a white streak of nothing in the lonely sky. During the day, it refused to fade away, preserving its legacy by hanging nearly transparent by the sun, like a thinly sliced piece of bread or a fading ink fingerprint on a returned check. It was at this time the people, previously too busy with work and deadlines and food and vanity, rediscovered the same moon they had been ignoring all this time, and fell back in love with it...then, an uproar ensued.
The way a small child cries for a toy they have discarded only because someone else has begun to play with it, the populace cried and moaned for their beloved moon, puking unrest from the depth of their aching guts and comparing the tragedy to the cancellation of favorite television shows. We wanted no part of the civilized panic.
The twinkling outskirts of the city gave way to dirty brown quiet isolation, and a whole new twinkling city of stars. Here, we were alone with the moon.
"They compare it to television shows," I declared, "but look!" My outstretched fingertips touched lightly the outline of moon in sky, as if to direct attention to it. "You can't! It is just this."
Away from the madness of the city, the moon seemed to fill the whole sky, a perfect circle, which I rubbed the smoothness of like a pregnant belly. Undeniably, it was beautiful -- more beautiful than it had ever been, and yet it was exactly the same. I realized that perfection is past-tense, meaning, perfection can only be realized once something beautiful is gone or destroyed or about to be gone or destroyed. The last few seconds that the perfect thing is in existence are what makes it perfect, because you suddenly realize how much that thing meant to you. By the time you realize this, however, it is only a short while before that perfect thing is no longer in existence, and so it doesn't matter whether perfection exists or not, even though it does exist. I choked on meaning.
All faces turned upward to the sky. The moon wavered like the most beautiful mirage, a cratered soap bubble just about to pop. All breath withheld at the sight of the amazing beauty...for just one second, every race was in agreement, every language understood every other language, and every Buddhist and even every non-Buddhist reached the state of Nirvana. In that one second, perfection existed. Then, the moon exploded, raining down a collection of brightly-colored psuedo-stars. The world let out its breath, and wondered what was for dinner.