Dear Wendy:
I’ve come down in your world. From goddess and muse to pockmarked hunk of rock with ice beneath. They crashed a bomb into my flesh, my silvered reflection not important enough now for poems and dreams. Such hatred of The Feminine. They would never think to do that to the sun.
In times past I was the incarnation of Diana, The Feminine as Goddess. I appeared in the woodlands at night and was worshiped. I watched ecstatic dances and listened to joyous chanting. And, I was charmed when the Aztecs threw that naughty rabbit up from the fires. I was The Feminine as Mother who punished cowards. Others saw the face of a jolly man looking down on them. One who tipples a bit at the local pub and waltzes merrily through the skies with his mysterious, milky lady.
Through all of the myths and stories, I have blessed humanity and worked my powers for the blood life of women and the tides of the oceans. More importantly, the turning wheel of my monthly cycle has illuminated for everyone the great Cosmic Functions of the Universe: creativity, maintenance, dissolution, concealment and grace.
Not so long ago that all began to change.
First, there was that lout trying to sell parts of me. An advertisement appeared in the New York Times. A dollar an acre, I believe. I laughed. Let the people waste their money if they are so stupid as to think I can be bought and sold.
I was less amused with astronauts leaving their galactic trash. Empty cartons of Tang and aluminum wrappers for freeze-dried food, flapping, tattered flags, trapped footprints, rolls of tape.
And now a darker shadow crosses me. The foolish souls of your planet have wasted their resources. Water. Not much left. Not enough to really go on. And, rather than working together to solve the problem, they looked to me and launched a rocket. It slammed into the Cabeus Crater, beneath the solar winds, to the south where I have purposely hidden in maidenly darkness for all time.
This violation turned my heart to ice and that was a thrill, so they said. The frozen, explosive sprays caused rejoicing. High fives all around! I am a new frontier for exploitation. I am an asset in a portfolio.
Do you agree, dear Wendy, that my reflective orbit should mirror hearts of ice? You who flew above an enchanted island only to be shot down by a misguided arrow.
Your torn sister,
The Moon
Dear The Moon,
I hear you, sister. I hear you loud and clear. And I have to say, this kind of treatment handed out to us fictional characters is hard enough to take.
But you! You’re a LEGEND! A MYTH! Much bigger than any of us. And look, just look at how they treat you.
Like I said, this fries me big time. I mean, I had noticed it was happening. How could I not? There’s not enough cooking sherry in the world that can distract me from the constant blathering about how Man is going to conquer the blah blah blah.
As if.
In fact, it is this constant blathering about how Man is going to conquer the blah blah blah that motivates me to get out of bed in the morning. You and I know what this is about, don’t we? It’s about Non Fictional Characters being afraid that, for them, Time is Running Out. So they, in sheer terror, feel they have to conquer us, one by one, just to make themselves feel real.
Look what they did to fairy tales. I ask you.
I’ve done a lot of thinking about this, my dear Sister, and my conclusion is this:
We need a new approach. They’re not listening to us. You can tell an idiot a million times that something s/he is doing is wrong/bad/stupid/liable to end in tears, but until something DOES end in tears, they just will not listen.
Who knows this better than the ex girlfriend of Peter Pan?
And it will end in tears. It’s inevitable.
Legends…myths…stories…fictional characters…all of us are the ground from which nonfiction springs. To eliminate us is to eliminate reality itself. To commodify us is to fatally impoverish the landscape. They think it’s the opposite, of course. They think we need them, and they don’t need us. So they blindly race ahead. Into what? There is no story that they can hear left to tell them. So they race on.
Let them do it, I say. Don’t argue. In the meantime, we have to concentrate on holding our own ground, and gaining it, too. Developing our stories. Deepening our myths. Passing on our legends so they change and grow.
When the Mad Scientists go belly up, we’ll be there. And when they’re willing to listen, we’ll be there with something to say.
Look down at us, Moon, in forgiveness and love. Don’t let small, mean characters sadden you, and slow you down in your search to know Who and What you are. Because the farther you go on your search, and the more stories you bring back from that road, the better off will be those of us who listen.
And there are those of us who listen. Soon, there will be more.
Yours from below, listening hard,
Ask Wendy