“But Legolas, you have the chronology all wrong,” I replied, because I had said I would in the preceding chapter. “Nay, Aragorn, son of Arathorn, not only do you have time all wrong, you have also mistaken space as something more than just an artifact of the mind.” I looked at him as if he were Albert Einstein relating ‘On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies’ while standing on a weedy shoreline, the existence of which I had not yet known. I mean Einstein’s paper and not the weedy shoreline, which I took for granted as existing back then. Now, not so much. “So take this Elven lembas bread and tell me what you see,” Legolas chanted as he faded to green while continuing, “although you may notice I'm not here myself.”
We were walking down the tree-lined dirt road that ran past my parent’s cottage and down the hill toward Joey’s. The smell of raspberries baking naturally in the mid-July heat wafted through my nostrils. Sounds of children playing in a splash of water floated to my ears. My eyes, though, were locked on David’s two hands which cupped a few small dots on wax-like paper. “It’s like Orange Sunshine except ten times better,” he enthused. He then spoke as if in a church, hushed and reverent. “I forget what the real name is but I like to call it Tangerine Truth.”
“Wow!” I responded. In a few hours, I wouldn’t be so loquacious.
“Yeah, wow is definitely the word, cousin. Here, have a hit of some fine fresh air,” he said, as he tore a piece of paper with a tiny speck of a spot of a tangerine dot and handed it to me. It felt like a sacrament, as I gently held it in the fingertips of my two upraised hands. In Nomine Leary, et Kesey, et Owsley Stanley. “Just let it rest on your tongue for a few minutes and then swallow the whole fucking logic and proportion down,” he smiled. “and get ready to watch the grooviest movie, man.”
Which I did. Except I wasn’t really watching the movie, as much as the movie was watching me. Time expanded; space contracted. From the dock down at the public beach, I watched as the universe stared at me with ten thousand eyes that looked a lot like mine. Slowly I moved my mouth and the man on the moon spoke. Slowly I moved my arm and a falling star streaked across the freaking sky, its quicksilver trail refusing to disappear, burning the diamond night with traces of my own eleven fingers. Far out!
“Did you hear the moon?” Joey whispered.
“I think it was a loon,” David spoke in acid awe.
I was silent. No, I thought very slowly to myself, Joey was absolutely right. That moon was definitely speaking to us. Full moon over New Moon Lake. Mead Moon. Buck Moon. Thunder Moon. Hay Moon! Speak a little louder! I pointed to it. Then I tried to repeat what it was saying. I failed. I couldn’t say a single word. It spoke again. Damn! I had nothing. The reflection on the water answered instead. Waves and waves and more waves.
First, it would be many years until I heard those words again and it wouldn’t be the moon speaking them. Second, I’d like to say, for posterity’s sake, I regret that particular trip and the ten or more that followed, until one of them tried to kill me before I was ready to die. But I don’t. Third, maybe you’re a better listener.
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