| He was alone at home the night the hollowness began to fill him. It was nothing new; he had experienced that incapacitating emptiness before. It was a lack of feeling, a lack of any internal emotional sensation, an emptying that left him with nothing to appreciate life, with nothing to hold on to life. He turned to the aid of all hopelessness; alcohol. Without consideration for himself or any other he filled his heart with burning liquid. That�s when it happened. Stars shot out of the glass, hissing across the room, bouncing off the walls and ceiling and floor, zooming past his head. He was startled, physically apprehensive of the bouncing projectiles, ducking in fear of painful contact, until one star painlessly collided with him, bursting into small incandescent points that gently faded away. Then the mist began to rise, slowly climbing from the glass like a romantic snake, twisting in a viscous, seductive dance. He noticed the mist and, unconsciously ignoring the shooting stars, became transfixed by its motions. The moon came in through the window and sat next to him. He turned to look into the moon�s eyes, to see into the depths of its soul, and saw the unmentionable loneliness of eternity there. Tears streamed down his cheek, and his hollowness grew, slowly gnawing his heart, and himself, into an empty shell. The moon was expressionless, allowing itself to be exposed to his silent questioning, not hiding anything, not afraid. He felt himself falling into the abyss that was the moon�s eyes. He experienced an immense fear as he lost all sense of an external world, falling into the depths of the moon�s sadness. Then, almost immediately, the fear fell off him, shed from whatever thin string of essence was still left of him, and freed him, allowing him to fly in a calmness that filled his hollowed heart with pure awareness. There was no self to lose, only the moon�s saddened soul to swim through, to experience all that the moon had experienced. All its long lost joys, all its sorrows, all its wins and losses, but especially its eternal loneliness. He didn�t understand how the moon, gliding through the silence of space, accompanied by the earth, sun, planets, and billions of stars, could feel so alone, until he came to its heart, and in one eternal instant, he understood. In that eternity he found the joy which he then realized all humanity is meant to experience, that pureness which we are all capable of achieving. He was not just himself but something greater. He was complete. He awoke on the couch next to the table, a spilt bottle of liquor on the floor. He was startled by the reality of his familiar surroundings. He remembered the events of the night before, and inside he felt that joy of being pure, the joy that had completed him, the joy stemming from the knowledge that he now, slowly, realized he�d lost; he couldn�t remember the source of the moon�s sadness. He realized that what he felt inside wasn�t the joy he�d experienced, but a memory, a longing for that completeness. Anger at the loss of that meaningful experience filled him, and anguish gripped his soul; he feared he had lost that knowledge forever. But he knew that he could get back that knowledge, that the reason for the moon�s sadness could be found, and that finding that knowledge was the key to his happiness, the way to his completeness. I met him in the mountains. I was walking under the full moon toward the festival when I saw him sitting on a rock by the side of the path. His face was raised toward the moon, and as I approached I saw tears on his face. He was crying silently, and I planned on walking past him, leaving him to his own reflection, but instead I asked him what made him cry so. He told me that he cried for the moon, for the loneliness it felt, and for the knowledge that he had lost, that which was the key to his happiness. He told me about that night, about the magic he had experienced, about the solitude he had felt, and about how he had lost himself and found the source of the moon�s sadness, how much this had meant to him, and how he ultimately lost that knowledge. I looked up at the moon and I understood. �It is sad because it only knows silence. It is lonely because music will never accompany it.� The man turned his gaze to me and in his eyes I saw the purest gratefulness I�ve ever seen. He stood, smiling at me, eyes dancing with joy, and turned his gaze back to the moon. He gently raised his arms, took the moon in them, looked deeply into the moon�s eyes, and I saw them both dance into the sky. |
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