4 December 2012
The full moon is unforgettable here. It rose like a swollen orange, more than rising, hanging in the darkness, drawing all aqueous substances to its cool, pitted surface. All day the water that crashed on the beach, swung back muddy and delirious, creating a bucking, straining undertow that preyed upon you casualness, your carelessness, and flung you bodily into its unceasing dragnet. I remarked, ignorantly at that time, that the breaking waves were muddy for the first time since we arrived. The seas were definitely rougher than in the previous days. But those, even though deprived the bird of a water nymph, dove and ducked in those swells and opined them swimming-pool safe.
Much later did I realise the cause for such a colossal upheaval in the sea. A distant moon draws the earth's waters towards its parched skin—be that liquid spread over tens of thousands of square miles, or the mucosa in our upward tugged eyes, awed by the luminosity, the sheer, untarnished beauty of an orbiting full moon.
Jupiter remained the solitary sentry that witnessed the daily orbit as the moon rose steadily to reach it, and then pass on in an overarching curve.
The three following days saw a calm sea that had the water babies cooing in pleasure.
Moonlight through palm fronds. There couldn't be more filtered a pleasure, more refined a joy.
The full moon is unforgettable here. It rose like a swollen orange, more than rising, hanging in the darkness, drawing all aqueous substances to its cool, pitted surface. All day the water that crashed on the beach, swung back muddy and delirious, creating a bucking, straining undertow that preyed upon you casualness, your carelessness, and flung you bodily into its unceasing dragnet. I remarked, ignorantly at that time, that the breaking waves were muddy for the first time since we arrived. The seas were definitely rougher than in the previous days. But those, even though deprived the bird of a water nymph, dove and ducked in those swells and opined them swimming-pool safe.
Much later did I realise the cause for such a colossal upheaval in the sea. A distant moon draws the earth's waters towards its parched skin—be that liquid spread over tens of thousands of square miles, or the mucosa in our upward tugged eyes, awed by the luminosity, the sheer, untarnished beauty of an orbiting full moon.
Jupiter remained the solitary sentry that witnessed the daily orbit as the moon rose steadily to reach it, and then pass on in an overarching curve.
The three following days saw a calm sea that had the water babies cooing in pleasure.
Moonlight through palm fronds. There couldn't be more filtered a pleasure, more refined a joy.
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