love, read, write

People used to tell me about the man in the moon, but I never really believed them. How could a man be in the moon? Was he the moon? Did the moon eat him? It confused me, logically, and I thought about it much too often for it to pass as a simple lie parents told to placate their children. It drove me nuts—in a benign way, of course—and eventually, I came to a conclusion, in the seclusion of my mind, the silence of my privacy: there was no man in the moon. There was a man on the moon.

It was a small theory I kept to myself—there really was no reason or way to test it out or prove these hundreds of people wrong. I didn’t want to wreak havoc in a world where there were already so many rules to be followed, lines to stay within. I accepted it as my own private truth, apart from everyone else’s. In fact, when my younger sister came along and grew old enough to talk and understand, I found myself telling her not about the truth—the man on the moon—but rather the preferred belief, the man in the moon. Those are the eyes, I would say, and the mouth. It came out of my mouth empty, and it echoed in my mind in utter silence. There was no man in the moon. I knew that.

I held to the belief religiously even after I learned about Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins and the fact that, actually, there really was no man in or on the moon—there was just the moon, a natural satellite, ambling around our humble planet like a silent, loyal companion. It was there for our tides, because of our gravity. The moon: another accessory to the sparkling night sky. No life, no man, no story.

But somehow, deep inside, I knew it had to be true. There had to be a man on the moon. It simply did not make sense that there was such a beautiful shape without a man to accompany it. It just had to be.

Years passed and the thoughts subsided, washed ashore and replaced by what people tended to consider as more important things. The man on the moon was much too far away to be relevant, and eventually, it was the last thought in my line of ideas; the one slumping against the wall at the very back, reading his ticket over and over again wondering when the line would shrink and his turn would come up.

For a while, I never thought his turn would come up. Too many predicaments, worries, problems arose that would cut in front of my dear friend, the thought of the man on the moon. Too many things were in the way. And as much as I’ve heard, such is the way of most people.

“Childish dreams stay in the past,” echoed my mother’s voice when I had asked her about the man on the moon at age fourteen. Childish dreams. What was childish? How could it be childish if it could be true?

But one day, an opportunity came over me that I never had before. Had never been offered to any man—and I was sure of it, because otherwise, why was nobody talking about the discovery of the man on the moon? I was the first man to experience this moment—it would be marked down in history:

I met the man on the moon.

I wasn’t too sure how it all happened, nor how it began, but I remember being there and I remember meeting him. One minute, I was driving home, thinking about dinner, and the next, there I was, floating around in nothingness, alone and empty, wondering if maybe a space debris would fly by. Occasionally, one did, but it would skitter past much too quickly for it to be significant. Or sometimes it would brush against my shoulder and I would feel sore for days afterwards. Sometimes it was a particularly important piece of space debris, and I would observe it in awe. But what hit me when I arrived at the moon was the realization that I had been floating in space for quite a long time. Much too long.

When I landed on the moon (in my space suit, of course—nobody moved around without a spacesuit), I was awed by the surface of the ground. Smooth, white, and silky, almost. Completely different than what the textbooks claimed. I sat there, perhaps for a minute, maybe an hour, or maybe a few years, but eventually I looked up because I was not alone. There was a man there.

“Hello,” he said cautiously, his lips moving a bit too slowly, as if I were watching a movie with the audio out of sync. His face was pale, his hair jet black, his clothes quite loose.

“Hello,” I echoed, then noting, “You’re not wearing a space suit.”

“I’m not,” the man agreed. Then he sat down, and I realized that there was a chair for me. I tried to sit, but my space suit was much too big.

“Why don’t you take that off?” His eyebrows raised in concern, “I’m sure it’s been very uncomfortable living like that for so long.”

For some reason, when he said that, tears washed over my face. I realized, indeed, how much unnecessary weight I had been burdening on my shoulders; how many years I had gone through trudging along, thinking I was nothing; how many millennia I had been under the impression that we were all weighed down to the Earth with nothing to do but simply speculate about men on the moon and do nothing else. I had been walking in place for too long.

I took my space suit off, then. I sighed in relief as fresh air bounced off my shoulders (was there air in space? Or perhaps it was my imagination) and I could feel myself much lighter already.

“Who are you?” I asked when I was adjusted to the chair, to the vast, gaping hole around us—black upon black upon black with a dazzling array of sparkling stars splattered across the darkness. “Are you the man on the moon?”

“Indeed I am,” he said, smiling mildly.

“You’ve been here all along?”

“All along.”

“How come people believe that there is a man in the moon and not on it?”

“It’s easier to see,” he said, lifting his shoulders barely visibly in a silent shrug.

I paused, observing his features. His hair was ivory black, a sort of black that was darker than the space around us but still somehow reassuring; his eyes were such an ambiguous shape that I could not tell whether he was from which continent—and eventually I gave up because any which way you wanted him to be, he could become; his clothes were a simple white jacket and black pants.

“Where were you when Neil Armstrong came here?” I said eventually, unable to keep in my curious questions.

“Here,” he answered simply. His eyes were milky soft, his voice smooth.

“They didn’t see you?”

“They didn’t come to see me. They came to see the man in the moon.”

“So there’s a man in the moon, too?”

He lets a long pause slip by before saying, “Maybe.”

“But there’s a man on the moon, that’s you, right?”

He pauses. Doesn’t reply.

“Maybe.”

Silence ensued, stretched out for too long until it was a thin string wrapping itself around my neck. I almost felt like I was going to stop breathing.

“Why don’t we go for a walk?” the man said, noticing my apparent struggle with breathing. I let out a sigh as the air was filled with sound once again.

“Yes,” I agreed. “A walk.”

We walked for a little, and I observed the crevices along the ground as he trudged forward. Our footsteps of careful crackles against the grainy ground decorated the silence.

At last we arrived at an edge—for apparently, there was an edge on the moon, and he sat down. Pulled out a fishing pole. Looked up at me expectantly. So I sat down beside him.

“Do you fish?” the man asked.

“Occasionally,” I replied. “With my family, sometimes. I’m not too good, though,” I said.

He nodded, silently attaching a small piece of bread to the hook. “Watch.”

As he threw the bait out, I watched the fishing line graciously dance out into the infinities of the universe. The line would never end. It went down and down and down and down until I looked down and my head hurt because I couldn’t possibly take in all of the information below us. There were no barriers—I could see straight down to infinity.

“Don’t look too far,” he said quietly, “it might hurt your eyes.”

I nodded, then looked to him. He was looking at his fishing pole.

“Do you catch fish here?”

“Fish?” he asked. He chuckled. “No, not fish.” The fishing pole began to squirm. We waited as he reeled it in, perhaps for a few years, maybe. I watched his patience.

Soon the hook appeared and I saw that there was no bread on the hook anymore.

“You didn’t catch anything,” I observed.

“No,” he said. He took something off of the hook, a faint glow. “A star.”

“That can’t be a star,” I said immediately, but something came over me, something like embarrassment or perhaps shame. “Or can it?” I added.

He didn’t reply, just cradled the light until it shone a little brighter, until it began to flicker like a shy flame.

“Some claim stars their own and attach their dreams to it,” the man said simply. He turned to me, then. Gave the star. I held it in my hands. It was lukewarm, tickling against my skin. I could feel it squirming.

“Thank you,” I said cordially. I didn’t know what to do with it.

The man watched me, observing my emotions. I felt uncomfortable with his eyes so intently fixed on me, but I chose to focus on the star. It was warm, a dull yellow, the size of two fists. It had a very faint glow, but a distinct power. We stayed like that for quite a while.

“I think it’s time for you to go now,” he said eventually, and I nodded. He was right.

“Good bye,” I said, turning to my left. But he was gone.

This is the most I can recall from my visit that day (or night, perhaps—or year). It was all too confusing—I had met the man in the moon, but then, I wasn’t so sure. It was too disjointed, everything was, too muddled in some fogged atmosphere. I woke up the following morning in a bed—my bed? A bed?—and there were people waiting for me. I was on Earth again. My heart sunk.

“You’re back!” they said in unison. Water lined their eyes.

“I’m back!” I replied. Water lined mine.

“We thought you were gone forever!”

“I met the man on the moon!”

They smiled, then. They didn’t hear me. Of course. They had never aimed for the man on the moon. They gave me tea, blankets, hugs, smiles, tears. All the while I told them about the man on the moon and they petted my hair, hugging me tight, saying, yes, yes, of course you did, of course you did, but now you’re here now, you’re safe, hush, hush, it’s okay, it’s okay. Everything’s back to normal now. I didn’t know what to say. I just sat and listened.

I looked up that night and saw the moon hanging in the night sky, full to the brim, displaying the man in the moon.

“So you met the man in the moon?” one little girl asked me, maybe seven or eight years old. Perhaps she was my younger sister from twenty years ago. Perhaps she was my daughter. Perhaps she was my granddaughter. I couldn’t tell. I was too lost in the sea of time, too unsure of where to place myself. But that didn’t change the answer.

“No,” I found myself saying softly. “There is a man on the moon. And I met him. Yesterday.”