CULT VALUE

During my first trip to Guyana as an adult back in '97, my father bought me a painting by the artist Eseoghene, entitled 'Moon-gazer'. Eseoghene, or Doris Rogers, was an old friend of my dad's, but still I was taken aback that he made the purchase -happily and generously, two qualities it was difficult to reconcile with his often closed-faced (and tight-fisted) personality. All the same I decided the gift was proffered out of a loving sentiment and accepted it with shy effusiveness and gratitude. E. said it was appropriate. Since we'd started sharing living arrangements he'd become accustomed to my occasional nocturnal vigils at the undressed windows, wordlessly consulting the moon. Sometimes he'd joke about the Italian legend that claims those of us born on December 25 are werewolves. I don't know where that comes from! Typical madcap 'italiania'. But according to that bizarre lore, I guess I was performing some manner of lunatic inner baying. Perhaps... All I know for sure is that since childhood the moon would sometimes call me from my bed, there was some message to impart. Or was it that checking for the white light in the sky was a reassuring ritual during periods of anxiety?

"I see the moon and the moon sees me.
God bless the moon and God bless me".

I used to repeat that verse by rote whenever I glimpsed the moon -by day or night. Didn't even have to think about it. Just one of those childhood rhymes that attaches to your soul, and is only shed after you perform a metamorphosis of the spirit. That's how I realize on this wintry evening in the East Midlands how much of me has changed. When was the last time I automatically recited that incantation? A year ago? Two? Five? No, not that long ago. But still far back enough on my journey for the winds of change to have swept away all trace. I mourn the loss of that prior self just a little, as my heart leaps at the full round luminescence visible from X's patio doors. Low in the sky. So low, it's like we're eye-to-eye the moon and I --taking stock of the history etched in the other one's face -a sad furrow here, an unnoticed dimple there. Still the same, tomorrow different...