Don’t you mess with my mother the moon

[ by Charles Cameron — a poor, low-res copy of the greatest photo, a poem of mine, and a recent report of a scenario involving nuking the moon, apparently considered and, I am happy to say, rejected by the military ]

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First, the greatest photo:

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Photo: Ansel Adams, Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, 1941

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Next, the poem:

Don’t you mess with my mother the moon!

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i

Don’t you mess with my mother the moon!

Pearl.

Superb in the night sky.

Which you treat as a junkyard.

ii

I am serious. I was never

more serious. This, which you thinking

life to be composed of things consider

real estate, rock,

subtly balances that other,

portending at the eye

that same angle — and that other, too

you would colonize,

strip, slash, mine, burn,

rape had you the chance, were it not

so magisterial a furnace.

Gold, which figures the sun

with silver the moon,

you have tapped for coinage,

despoiling hills for greed,

valleys for your convenience:

nor is your idiocy limited in reach

by anything but your idiocy.

Sun and moon are married

in a wedding you cannot conceive,

to which you lack invitation

though it was offered you.

The simple light of the night sky

escapes you, neither glimpse

nor sonata troubles your soul with its ripples,

for you lack, altogether,

reflection.

**

I wrote that poem quite a few years ago, and intended it as an appeal from the side of joyous poetic appreciation against the prevalent idea that the moon is a chunk of rock to be mined and otherwise exploited like any other. I didn’t suppose then that my voice would be heard against the amplified voices of technology, commerce, and human hubris—but voices will be voices, even in the wilderness.

The Japanese have a tradition of “moon-viewing” festivals — Tsukimi – a superb idea, appropriately reflective of the culture that produced the zen poet Ryokan, who celebrated a thief’s visit to pillage his mountain hermitage with the words:

The thief left it behind:

the moon

at my window.

The thief couldn’t steal it — but boyo, we still might be able to figure out a way to mess it up…

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I for one don’t ever want to look at the moon and know that someone is using it as a projection screen for advertisements, let alone that its face is disfigured by robotic factories producing cheap running shoes – bad enough that we’ve left our trash there already!

Credit: NASA / Orbiter shows trash, tracks at Apollo moon landing sites

Look, my techno-leaning human friends — mine the asteroid belt if you must, I suppose Disney will eventually get the rights to Saturn, and make a ride of it – but leave the moon, leave the moon alone.

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Then, the scenario:

I mean, how myopic can we get? According to Forbes yeaterday:

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