“
He froze, becoming stone still. As the hover climbed the hill to the palace, his shoulders sank, and he returned his gaze to the window. "She's my alpha," he murmured, with a haunting sadness in his voice.
Alpha.
Cress leaned forward, propping her elbows on her knees, "Like the star?"
"What star?"
She stiffened, instantly embarrassed, and scooted back from him again. "Oh. Um. In a constellation, the brightest star is called the alpha. I thought maybe you meant that she's...like...your brightest star." Looking away, she knotted her hands in her lap, aware that she was blushing furiously now and this beast of a man was about to realize what an over-romantic sap she was.
But instead of sneering or laughing, Wolf sighed, "Yes," he said, his gaze climbing up to the full moon that had emerged in the blue evening sky. "Exactly like that.
”
”
Marissa Meyer (Cress (The Lunar Chronicles, #3))
“
Tonight the sky was utterly black. Perhaps there was no moon tonight—a lunar eclipse, a new moon. A new moon. I shivered, though I wasn't cold.
”
”
Stephenie Meyer (New Moon (The Twilight Saga, #2))
“
What do you mean? Is she in a coma?”
“Not anymore.” She braced herself for his reaction.
“But she’s a cyborg.”
His eyes widened, but then his attention was darting around the room as though he couldn’t look at Cinder while he adjusted to that information. “I see,” he said slowly, before meeting her gaze again.
“But … is she all right?”
The question caught her by surprise and she couldn’t help a startled laugh. “Oh, yeah, she’s great. I mean, half the people in the world want to kill her and the other half want to chain her to a throne on the moon, which is just what she’s always wanted. So she’s fantastic.
”
”
Marissa Meyer (Cress (The Lunar Chronicles, #3))
“
who knows if the moon's
a balloon,coming out of a keen city
in the sky--filled with pretty people?
( and if you and I should
get into it,if they
should take me and take you into their balloon,
why then
we'd go up higher with all the pretty people
than houses and steeples and clouds:
go sailing
away and away sailing into a keen
city which nobody's ever visited,where
always
it's
Spring)and everyone's
in love and flowers pick themselves
”
”
E.E. Cummings (Collected Poems)
“
We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.
”
”
John F. Kennedy
“
The only purpose of our lives consists in waking each other up and being there for each other.
”
”
Johanna Paungger (Moon Time: The Art of Harmony with Nature and Lunar Cycles)
“
Poetry, the best of it, is lunar and is concerned with the essential insanities. Journalism is solar (there are numerous newspapers named The Sun, none called The Moon) and is devoted to the inessential.
”
”
Tom Robbins (Still Life with Woodpecker)
“
Sybil tells me your little festival is an annual occurrence," she said, the cadence of her voice swooning like a lullaby.
"Yes," Kai said, lifting a shrimp wonton between his chopsticks. "It falls on the ninth full moon if each year."
"Ah, how lovely for you to base your holidays on the cycles of my planet."
Kai wanted to scoff at the word planet but sucked it back down his throat.
”
”
Marissa Meyer (Cinder (The Lunar Chronicles, #1))
“
Sweet Crescent Moon, up in the sky,
Won't you sing your song to Earth as she passes by?
Your sweetest silver melody, a rhythm and a ryme,
A lullaby of pleasant dreams as you make your climb.
Send the forests off to bed, the mountains tuck in tight,
Rock the ocean gently, and the deserts kiss goodnight.
Sweet Crescent Moon, up in the sky,
You sing your song so sweetly after sunshine passes by.
”
”
Marissa Meyer (Stars Above (The Lunar Chronicles, #4.5))
“
It was lunar symbolism that enabled man to relate and connect such heterogeneous things as: birth, becoming, death, and ressurection; the waters, plants, woman, fecundity, and immortality; the cosmic darkness, prenatal existence, and life after death, followed by the rebirth of the lunar type ("light coming out of darkness"); weaving, the symbol of the "thread of life," fate, temporality, and death; and yet others. In general most of the ideas of cycle, dualism, polarity, opposition, conflict, but also of reconciliation of contraries, of coincidentia oppositorum, were either discovered or clarified by virtue of lunar symbolism. We may even speak of a metaphysics of the moon, in the sense of a consistent system of "truths" relating to the mode of being peculiar to living creatures, to everything in the cosmos that shares in life, that is, in becoming, growth and waning, death and ressurrection.
”
”
Mircea Eliade (The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion)
“
Now, what I’m worried about is how we’re going to be dividing the reward money when this is all over. Because this ship is starting to feel awfully crowded and I’m not sure I’m happy with all of you cutting into my profits.”
“What reward money?” asked Scarlet.
“The reward Cinder’s going to pay us out of the Lunar treasury once she’s queen.”
Cinder rolled her eyes. “I should have guessed.
”
”
Marissa Meyer (Cress (The Lunar Chronicles, #3))
“
Lunars were a society that had evolved from an Earthen moon colony centuries ago, but they weren’t human anymore. People said Lunars could alter a person’s brain—make you see things you shouldn’t see, feel things you shouldn’t feel, do things you didn’t want to do. Their unnatural power had made them a greedy and violent race, and Queen Levana was the worst of all of them.
”
”
Marissa Meyer (Cinder (The Lunar Chronicles, #1))
“
we need a god who bleeds now
a god whose wounds are not
some small male vengeance
some pitiful concession to humility
a desert swept with dryin marrow in honor of the lord
we need a god who bleeds
spreads her lunar vulva & showers us in shades of scarlet
thick & warm like the breath of her
our mothers tearing to let us in
this place breaks open
like our mothers bleeding
the planet is heaving mourning our ignorance
the moon tugs the seas
to hold her/to hold her
embrace swelling hills/i am
not wounded i am bleeding to life
we need a god who bleeds now
whose wounds are not the end of anything
”
”
Ntozake Shange
“
After she was born, I wanted to run away, to bring her to Earth, but my wife was even more devoted to Her Majesty than I had been. She wanted nothing to do with the child. And so my little Crescent Moon was taken away, like all the others.
”
”
Marissa Meyer (Cinder (The Lunar Chronicles, #1))
“
Sweet Crescent Moon...," he whispered, his lips barely able to form the words. He began to shiver. "Up in the sky..." He hummed a few bars of a song, a lullaby that seemed barely familiar. "You sing your song...so sweetly...after sunshine passes....
”
”
Marissa Meyer (Cress (The Lunar Chronicles, #3))
“
The streetlights had already lit up on Bronnaya, and a golden moon hung over the Patriarchs. In the ever deceiving lunar light, it appeared to Ivan Nikolayevich that, instead of a cane, the professor stood holding a sword under his arm.
”
”
Mikhail Bulgakov (The Master and Margarita)
“
Sweet crescent moon, up in the sky. You sing your song sweetly sunshine passes by.…
”
”
Marissa Meyer (Cress (The Lunar Chronicles, #3))
“
He may have known the surface of the moon, memorized the names of the lunar maria, but Miel had done more than that with him. She'd learned him, but left room for the way he was still learning himself. She knew the shape of him, every place that was shadow and every place that reflected light, without deciding he was hers to name.
”
”
Anna-Marie McLemore (When the Moon Was Ours)
“
But she didn't fear the moon because she was more lunar than solar and could see with wide-open eyes in the dark dawns the sinister moon in the sky. So she bathed all over in the lunar rays, as there are others who sunbathed. And was becoming profoundly limpid.
”
”
Clarice Lispector (An Apprenticeship or The Book of Pleasures)
“
Moon is a superstar to a neon light
Both are in doubt of their lifeless plight
One envies the sun, the other one’s scared
But to face the dark they’re always prepared
”
”
Munia Khan
“
We came all this way to explore the moon, and the most important thing is that we discovered the earth.
”
”
William A. Anders Apollo 8 Lunar Module Pilot
“
A friend. What is a friend, in a world where any friend may be a lover at a new phase of the moon? Not I, locked in my virility: no friend to Therem Harth, or any other of his race. Neither man nor woman, neither and both, cyclic, lunar, metamorphosing under the hand's touch, changelings in the human cradle, they were no flesh of mine, no friends; no love between us.
”
”
Ursula K. Le Guin (The Left Hand of Darkness)
“
lunar material, it is thought, came from the Earth’s crust, not its core, which is why the Moon has so little iron while we have a lot.
”
”
Bill Bryson (A Short History of Nearly Everything)
“
The bullying of citizens by means of dreads and fights has been going on since paleolithic times. Greenpeace fund-raisers on the subject of global warming are not much different than the tribal Wizards on the subject of lunar eclipses. 'Oh no, Night Wolf is eating the Moon Virgin. Give me silver and I will make him spit her out.
”
”
P.J. O'Rourke (All the Trouble in the World)
“
The sea is not all that responds to the moon. Twice a day the solid earth bobs up and down, as much as a foot. That kind of force and that kind of distance are more than enough to break hard rock. Wells will flow faster during lunar high tides.
”
”
John McPhee (Annals of the Former World)
“
The cool enchantment of evening has arrived after the prostrating heat of summer's day and we lie quietly in anticipation of Your luminous appearance - Mysterious Selene, Whose Lunar Orb relieves the dark of night.
”
”
Lady Svetlana
“
Thoughts have power, influencing humanity's collective path. The difference between Mother Teresa and Adolf Hitler lies, ultimately, in how they thought. A thought can change the world for the better—or damn it forever.
”
”
Diane Shauer (Battle of the Blood Moons)
“
Have faith that what you require already exists and you only have to retrieve it.
”
”
Laraine Mesavage (Riding Moon Cycles Moon Days)
“
This moon, O lunar landscape glow, by reflecting sunlight's passing flow...of energy and vibrant waves to mirror back our feelings so.
”
”
Andrew Pacholyk (Lead Us To A Place: Your Spiritual Journey Through Life's Seasons)
“
Surely, as a rule, some little bit of moonlight would filter through the clouds, through the clinks in the canopy of trees, and find the ground.
Not tonight. Tonight the sky was utterly black. Perhaps there was no moon tonight-a lunar eclipse, a new moon.
A new moon. I shivered, though I wasn't cold.
”
”
Stephenie Meyer (New Moon (The Twilight Saga, #2))
“
There is a spooky quality about the ability of mathematicians to get there ahead of physicists. It's as if when Neil Armstrong first landed on the moon he found in the lunar dust the footsteps of Jules Verne.
”
”
Steven Weinberg
“
It was then between one o'clock in the morning and half-past that hour; the sky soon cleared a bit before me, and the lunar crescent peeped out from behind the clouds - that sad crescent of the last quarter of the moon. The crescent of the new moon, that which rises at four or five o'clock in the evening, is clear, bright and silvery; but that which rises after midnight is red, sinister and disquieting; it is the true crescent of the witches' Sabbath: all night-walkers must have remarked the contrast. The first, even when it is as narrow as a silver thread, projects a cheery ray, which rejoices the heart, and casts on the ground sharply defined shadows; while the latter reflects only a mournful glow, so wan that the shadows are bleared and indistinct. ("Who Knows?")
”
”
Guy de Maupassant (Ghostly By Gaslight)
“
She smoothed her skirt around her knees. “This Scarlet … you’re in love with her, aren’t you?” He froze, becoming stone still. As the hover climbed the hill to the palace, his shoulders sank, and he returned his gaze to the window. “She’s my alpha,” he murmured, with a haunting sadness in his voice. Alpha. Cress leaned forward, propping her elbows on her knees. “Like the star?” “What star?” She stiffened, instantly embarrassed, and scooted back from him again. “Oh. Um. In a constellation, the brightest star is called the alpha. I thought maybe you meant that she’s … like … your brightest star.” Looking away, she knotted her hands in her lap, aware that she was blushing furiously now and this beast of a man was about to realize what an over-romantic sap she was. But instead of sneering or laughing, Wolf sighed. “Yes,” he said, his gaze climbing up to the full moon that had emerged over the city. “Exactly like that.” With a quick twist to her heart, Cress’s fear of him began to subside. She’d been right back at the boutique. He was like the hero of a romance story, and he was trying to rescue his beloved. His alpha.
”
”
Marissa Meyer (Cress (The Lunar Chronicles, #3))
“
The rats were all gone, but He slid into the room through the sash, though it was only open an inch wide-just as the Moon herself has often come in through the tiniest crack, and has stood before me in all her size and splendour.
”
”
Bram Stoker (Dracula)
“
Moon is associated with, astrologically speaking: feelings, emotions, mothers, parenting, memories, femininity, the Goddess, witches, women, childhood, cycles, nourishment, heritage, habits, sensitivity, moods, fluctuations, subconscious, receptivity, domestic life, the public, feeding, nurturing, home, needs, and more.
”
”
Yasmin Boland (Moonology: Working with the Magic of Lunar Cycles)
“
… to rule at my side with grace and justice, to honor the laws of the Earthen Union as laid out by our forefathers, to be an advocate for peace and fairness among all peoples.”
Did anyone believe a word of this rubbish?
“From this day forward, she will be my sun at dawn and my moon at night, and I vow to love and cherish her for all our days.”
Who wrote these vows anyway? He’d never heard anything so ridiculous in his life.
”
”
Marissa Meyer (Winter (The Lunar Chronicles, #4))
“
One of his favorites was Robert Heinlein’s The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, a novel about a lunar penal colony.
”
”
Walter Isaacson (Elon Musk)
“
And "Immortality"
mildews ...
in the museums of the moon
”
”
Mina Loy (The Lost Lunar Baedeker: Poems)
“
The Moon would shine as brightly as the midmorning sun, and by the end of the two minutes, the lunar regolith would be heated to a glow.
”
”
Randall Munroe (What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions)
“
we have forgotten what night tastes like,
salted by full moon silver rupturing
the dark. we have forgotten how the skin
sings when the lunar fervor unfurls
across its follicles.
”
”
Beth Morey (Night Cycles: Poetry for a Dark Night of the Soul)
“
(The USPS owns an envelope, smudged with lunar dust and postmarked on the moon in 1971, that bears a proof for the Apollo 15 stamps yet to be printed.)
”
”
Winifred Gallagher (How the Post Office Created America: A History)
“
a woman’s phases are inconsistent or unreliable, they can be realigned by strengthening her affinity with the moon, the tides, and other lunar forces
”
”
Judika Illes (Encyclopedia of Witchcraft: The Complete A-Z for the Entire Magical World (Witchcraft & Spells))
“
I didn't use to be this way. I was happy when I was a child. I had such grand ideas about how life would be. What happened to me? What happened to us?"
"We grew up.
”
”
Nathan Ballingrud (Crypt of the Moon Spider (Lunar Gothic Trilogy, #1))
“
Sweet Crescent Moon..." he whispered, his lips barely able to form the word. He began to shiver.
"Up in the sky..." He hummed a few bars of the song, a lullaby that seemed barely familiar. "You sing your song so sweetly... so sweetly... after sunshine passes..."
The last word hovered unspoken as he stopped shuddering and lay still, his blue eyes staring upward like empty marbles.
”
”
Marissa Meyer (Cress (The Lunar Chronicles, #3))
“
It began with meetings, five months before the Apollo 11 launch. The newly formed Committee on Symbolic Activities for the First Lunar Landing gathered to debate the appropriateness of planting a flag on the moon.
”
”
Mary Roach (Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void)
“
Yes," he replied, "absolutely sans mademoiselle; for I am to take mademoiselle to the moon, and there I shall seek a cave in one of the white valleys among the volcano-tops, and mademoiselle shall live with me there, and only me." "She will have nothing to eat--you will starve her," observed Adèle. "I shall gather manna for her morning and night; the plains and hell-sides in the moon are bleached with manna, Adèle." "She will want to warm herself; what will she do for a fire?" "Fire rises out of the lunar mountains; when she is cold, I'll carry her up to a peak and lay her down on the edge of a crater." "Oh, she'll be uncomfortable there! And her clothes, they will wear out; how can she get new ones?" Mr. Rochester professed to be puzzled. "Hem!" said he. "What would you do, Adèle? Cudgel your brains for an expedient. How would a white or a pink cloud answer for a gown, do you think? And one could cut a pretty enough scarf out of a rainbow." "She is far better as she is," concluded Adèle, after musing some time; "besides, she would get tired of living with only you in the moon. If I were mademoiselle, I would never consent to go with you.
”
”
Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)
“
The Moon is earth’s oldest temple holding the potency of countless prayers since the dawn of time… a bell whose ringing brings you into the field of the Mother, where body and soul can quietly drink. DANA GERHARDT, MOONCIRCLES Would
”
”
Yasmin Boland (Moonology: Working with the Magic of Lunar Cycles)
“
the Maya knew the time taken by the moon to orbit the earth. Their estimate of this period was 29.528395 days – extremely close to the true figure of 29.530588 days computed by the finest modern methods.11 The Mayan priests also had in their possession very accurate tables for the prediction of solar and lunar eclipses and were aware that these could occur only within plus or minus eighteen days of the node (when the moon’s path crosses the apparent path of the sun).
”
”
Graham Hancock (Fingerprints of the Gods: The Evidence of Earth's Lost Civilization)
“
Here is one way to conceptualize NASA's heroic era: in 1961, Kennedy gave his "moon speech" to Congress, charging them to put an American on the moon "before the decade is out." In the eight years that unspooled between Kennedy's speech and Neil Armstrong's first historic bootprint, NASA, a newborn government agency, established sites and campuses in Texas, Florida, Alabama, California, Ohio, Maryland, Mississippi, Virginia, and the District of Columbia; awarded multi-million-dollar contracts and hired four hundred thousand workers; built a fully functioning moon port in a formerly uninhabited swamp; designed and constructed a moonfaring rocket, spacecraft, lunar lander, and space suits; sent astronauts repeatedly into orbit, where they ventured out of their spacecraft on umbilical tethers and practiced rendezvous techniques; sent astronauts to orbit the moon, where they mapped out the best landing sites; all culminating in the final, triumphant moment when they sent Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to step out of their lunar module and bounce about on the moon, perfectly safe within their space suits. All of this, start to finish, was accomplished in those eight years.
”
”
Margaret Lazarus Dean (Leaving Orbit: Notes from the Last Days of American Spaceflight)
“
Any dedicated moon-watcher will know that, regardless of the year, I have taken a good many liberties with the lunar cycle-usually to take advantage of days (Valentine's, July 4th, etc.) which "mark" certain months in our minds. To those readers who feel that I didn't know any better, I assert that I did ... but the temptation was simply too great to resist.
”
”
Stephen King
“
There are essential and inessential insanities. The latter are solar in character, the former are linked to the moon. Inessential insanities are a brittle amalgamation of ambition, aggression, and pre-adolescent anxiety - garbage that should have been dumped long ago. Essential insanities are those impulses one instinctively senses are virtuous and correct, even though peers may regard them as coo-coo. Inessential insanities get one in trouble with one's self. Essential insanities get one in trouble with others. In fact, it may be essential. Poetry, the best of it, is lunar and is concerned with the essential insanities.-
”
”
Tom Robbins (Still Life with Woodpecker)
“
Adèle heard him, and asked if she was to go to school “sans mademoiselle?” “Yes,” he replied, “absolutely sans mademoiselle; for I am to take mademoiselle to the moon, and there I shall seek a cave in one of the white valleys among the volcano-tops, and mademoiselle shall live with me there, and only me.” “She will have nothing to eat: you will starve her,” observed Adèle. “I shall gather manna for her morning and night: the plains and hillsides in the moon are bleached with manna, Adèle.” “She will want to warm herself: what will she do for a fire?” “Fire rises out of the lunar mountains: when she is cold, I’ll carry her up to a peak, and lay her down on the edge of a crater.” “Oh, qu’ elle y sera mal—peu comfortable! And her clothes, they will wear out: how can she get new ones?” Mr. Rochester professed to be puzzled. “Hem!” said he. “What would you do, Adèle? Cudgel your brains for an expedient. How would a white or a pink cloud answer for a gown, do you think? And one could cut a pretty enough scarf out of a rainbow.
”
”
Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)
“
In the photograph Collins took, there’s the lunar module carrying Armstrong and Aldrin, just behind them the moon, and some two hundred and fifty thousand miles beyond that the earth, a blue half-sphere hanging in all blackness and bearing mankind. Michael Collins is the only human being not in that photograph, it is said, and this has always been a source of great enchantment. Every single other person currently in existence, to mankind’s knowledge, is contained in that image; only one is missing, he who made the image.
”
”
Samantha Harvey (Orbital)
“
I think it was the Earthrise that really kind of got everybody in the solar plexus … We were looking back at our planet, the place where we evolved. Our Earth was quite colorful, pretty and delicate compared to the very rough, rugged, beat-up, even boring lunar surface. I think it struck everybody that here we’d come 240,000 miles to see the Moon and it was the Earth that was really worth looking at. At
”
”
Julian Barnes (Levels of Life)
“
Since the lunchroom does no significant harm to the caverns' ecology, I'd like to believe that this is one of those lucky places where we don't have to choose between doing the right thing and enjoying a goof. I look up at the ceiling of the lunchroom, which is, of course, the ceiling of the cave. It looks so lunar I can't help but think of a certain astronaut. In 1971, Apollo 14's Alan Shepard hit golf balls on the moon. Gearing up to face the profundity of the universe, this man brought sporting goods with him into space. Who can blame him? That's what we Americans do when we find a place that's really special. We go there and act exactly like ourselves. And we are a bunch of fun-loving dopes.
”
”
Sarah Vowell (The Partly Cloudy Patriot)
“
If we do not require a calendar to be geared to a tropical year (earth's orbit), but only that it be geared to some part of the celestial clock, then the Maya calendar was more accurate than the Julian calendar, more accurate than the Babylonian (solar-lunar) calendar; it intermeshed the "gear wheels" of Sun, Moon and Venus, and was based on a more accurate "gear ratio" than the other calendars, repeating itself only once in 52 years.
”
”
Petr Beckmann (A History of π)
“
Major General Anders later reflected: I think it was the Earthrise that really kind of got everybody in the solar plexus … We were looking back at our planet, the place where we evolved. Our Earth was quite colorful, pretty and delicate compared to the very rough, rugged, beat-up, even boring lunar surface. I think it struck everybody that here we’d come 240,000 miles to see the Moon and it was the Earth that was really worth looking at.
”
”
Julian Barnes (Levels of Life)
“
A little later, the Apollo mission was consummated and there were Americans on the moon. I remember distinctly looking up from the quad on what was quite a moon-flooded night, and thinking about it. They made it! The Stars and Stripes are finally flown on another orb! Also, English becomes the first and only language spoken on a neighboring rock! Who could forbear to cheer? Still, the experience was poisoned for me by having to watch Richard Nixon smirking as he babbled to the lunar-nauts by some closed-circuit link. Was even the silvery orb to be tainted by the base, earthbound reality of imperialism?
”
”
Christopher Hitchens (Hitch 22: A Memoir)
“
Instead of taking a bow for walking on the moon, Colonel Buzz Aldrin, PhD, told his admirers, “It’s something we did. Now we should do something else,” apparently no more satisfied than if he had painted a fence. His desire was not to bask in his glory but to find “something else”—the next big challenge that could hold his interest. This perpetual need to identify a goal and calculate a way to reach it was perhaps the most important factor in his historic success. But it’s not easy having so much dopamine coursing through the control circuits. It almost certainly played a significant role in Aldrin’s post-lunar struggle with depression, alcoholism, three divorces, suicidal impulses, and a stay on a psychiatric ward, which he described in his candid autobiography, Magnificent Desolation: The Long Journey Home from the Moon.
”
”
Daniel Z. Lieberman (The Molecule of More: How a Single Chemical in Your Brain Drives Love, Sex, and Creativity―and Will Determine the Fate of the Human Race)
“
Lunar Paraphrase"
The moon is the mother of pathos and pity.
When, at the wearier end of November,
Her old light moves along the branches,
Feebly, slowly, depending upon them;
When the body of Jesus hangs in a pallor,
Humanly near, and the figure of Mary,
Touched on by hoar-frost, shrinks in a shelter
Made by the leaves, that have rotted and fallen;
When over the houses, a golden illusion
Brings back an earlier season of quiet
And quieting dreams in the sleepers in darkness—
The moon is the mother of pathos and pity.
”
”
Wallace Stevens
“
One substantial hunk of junk led to the formation of the Moon. The unexpected scarcity of iron and other higher-mass elements in the Moon, derived from lunar samples returned by Apollo astronauts, indicates that the Moon most likely burst forth from Earth’s iron-poor crust and mantle after a glancing collision with a wayward Mars-sized protoplanet.
”
”
Neil deGrasse Tyson (Astrophysics for People in a Hurry (Astrophysics for People in a Hurry Series))
“
Just as it is impossible to prove the existence of God, so is it impossible to prove or disprove the lunar landings.
”
”
Gerhard Wisnewski (One Small Step?: The Great Moon Hoax and the Race to Dominate Earth from Space)
“
The fact remains that to date (May 2007) not a single plausible sign of lunar landings has been discovered on the moon.
”
”
Gerhard Wisnewski (One Small Step?: The Great Moon Hoax and the Race to Dominate Earth from Space)
“
Enriched by a singular event that is larger than life, I no longer have the luxury of being ordinary. To stand on the lunar surface and look back at our Earth creates such a personal sense of awe that even Alan Shepard wept at the view. Trying to exist within the paradox of being in this world after visiting another may be why some Moon voyagers tend to be reclusive.
”
”
Eugene Cernan (The Last Man on the Moon: One Man's Part in Mankind's Greatest Adventure)
“
The moon established which day was the first of the month, and which was the fifteenth. Such festivals as Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles were set on particular days of the month (Leviticus 23:5-6, 34; Numbers 28:11-14; 2 Chronicles 8:13; Psalm 81:3). The moon, of course, governs the night (Psalm 136:9; Jeremiah 31:35), and in a sense the entire Old Covenant took place at night. With the rising of the Sun of Righteousness (Malachi 4:2), the "day" of the Lord is at hand (Malachi 4:1), and in a sense the New Covenant takes place in the daytime. As Genesis 1 says over and over, first evening and then morning. In the New Covenant we are no longer under lunar regulation for festival times (Colossians 2:16-17). In that regard, Christ is our light.
”
”
James B. Jordan (Through New Eyes: Developing a Biblical View of the World)
“
Even at brightest noon, it’s always
Full moon in my country. In these streets of
Tropic stone and Malay blood, daylight is
Moonlight mugging me on every corner
Where human shadows loll in an atmosphere
Both lunar and lunatic.
And while from either pole we’re
Half a world and seas away, this
Might as well be
An arctic archipelago, where as
The sun burns the colder it gets.
This might as well be
Equatorial Antarctica...
”
”
Luis H. Francia (The Arctic Archipelago and other poems)
“
Prison Moon
Four a.m. work duty and I begin
my solitary trudge from outer compound
to main building. A shivering guard,
chilled in his lonely outpost, strip searches
me until content that my inconsequential nudity.
poses no threat and then whispers
the secret code that allows me admittance
into the open quarter-mile walkway.
I chuff my way into another day
as ice glints on the razor wire
and the rifles note my numbed passage,
silent but for my huffs and scuffle
on the cracked, slippery sidewalk
A new moon, veiled in wispy fog
and beringed in glory, hangs over the prison,
its gaudy glow taunting the halogen spotlights.
The moon’s creamy pull upsets
some liquid equilibrium within me
and like tides, wolves and all manner
of madmen, I surrender disturbed by the certainty that under
the bony luminescence of a grinning moon
The lunar deliriums grip me
and I howl--once, then again, and
surely somewhere an unbound sleeper stirs,
penitence is dying a giddy death.
I shake myself sane
and as the echoes hang
in the frigid air I explain
to the wild-eyed guard that convicts,
like all animals under the leash,
must bay at the beauty beyond them.
”
”
Jorge Antonio Renaud
“
Given the complexity of the chore, “escapees,” as free-floating fecal material is known in astronautical circles, plagued the crews. Below is an excerpt from the Apollo 10 mission transcript, starring Mission Commander Thomas Stafford, Lunar Module Pilot Gene Cernan, and Command Module Pilot John Young, orbiting the moon 200,000-plus miles from the nearest bathroom. CERNAN:…You know once you get out of lunar orbit, you can do a lot of things. You can power down…And what’s happening is— STAFFORD: Oh—who did it? YOUNG: Who did what? CERNAN: What? STAFFORD: Who did it? [laughter] CERNAN: Where did that come from? STAFFORD: Give me a napkin quick. There’s a turd floating through the air. YOUNG: I didn’t do it. It ain’t one of mine. CERNAN: I don’t think it’s one of mine. STAFFORD: Mine was a little more sticky than that. Throw that away. YOUNG: God almighty. [And again eight minutes later, while discussing the timing of a waste-water dump.] YOUNG: Did they say we could do it anytime? CERNAN: They said on 135. They told us that—Here’s another goddam turd. What’s the matter with you guys? Here, give me a— YOUNG/STAFFORD: [laughter]… STAFFORD: It was just floating around? CERNAN: Yes. STAFFORD: [laughter] Mine was stickier than that. YOUNG: Mine was too. It hit that bag— CERNAN: [laughter] I don’t know whose that is. I can neither claim it nor disclaim it. [laughter] YOUNG: What the hell is going on here?
”
”
Mary Roach (Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void)
“
Again the dance hall, the money rhythm, the love that comes over the radio, the impersonal, wingless touch of the crowd. A despair that reaches down to the very soles of the boots, an ennui, a desperation. In the midst of the highest mechanical perfection to dance without joy, to be so desperately alone, to be almost inhuman because you are human. If there were life on the moon what more nearly perfect, joyless evidence of it could there be than this. If to travel away from the sun is to reach the chill idiocy of the moon, then we have arrived at our goal and life is but the cold, lunar incandescence of the sun. This is the dance of ice-cold life in the hollow of an atom, and the more we dance the colder it gets.
”
”
Henry Miller (Tropic of Capricorn (Tropic, #2))
“
The reason for the great number and variety of Old European images lies in the fact that this symbolism is lunar and chthonic, built around the understanding that life is in eternal transformation, in constant and rhythmic change between creation and destruction, birth and death. The moon's three phases-new, waxing, and old-are repeated in trinities or triple function deities that recall these moon phases; maiden, nymph, and crone; life-giving, death-giving, and transformational; rising, dying, and self-renewing. Life-givers are also death-wielders. Immortality is secured through the innate forces of regeneration within Nature itself. The concept of regeneration and renewal is perhaps the most outstanding and dramatic theme we perceive in this symbolism.
It seems more appropriate to view all of these Goddess images as aspects of the one Great Goddess with her core functions-life-giving, death-wielding, regeneration, and renewal. The obvious analogy would be to Nature itself; through the multiplicity of phenomena and continuing cycles of which it is made, one recognizes the fundamental and underlying unity of Nature. The Goddess is immanent rather than transcendent and therefore physically manifest.
”
”
Marija Gimbutas (The Language of the Goddess)
“
Anyway, it's a pretty good story," I said. "You have to admit."
"Yeah?" He crumpled up the Kleenex, having dispatched the solitary tear. "You can have it. I'm giving it to you. After I'm gone, write it down. Explain everything. Make it mean something. Use a lot of those fancy metaphors of yours. Put the whole thing in proper chronological order, not like this mishmash I'm making you. Start with the night I was born. March second, 1915. There was a lunar eclipse that night, you know what that is?"
"When the earth's shadow falls across the Moon."
"Very significant. I'm sure it's a perfect metaphor for something. Start with that."
"Kind of trite." I said.
He threw the Kleenex at my head. It bounced off my cheek and fell on the floor. I bent to pick it up. Somewhere in its fibers, it held what may have been the last tear my grandfather ever shed. Out of respect for his insistence on the meaninglessness of life--his, everyone's--I threw it into the wastebasket by the door.
”
”
Michael Chabon (Moonglow)
“
Several families had obnoxious kids bouncing off the walls. In this case, "bouncing off the walls" is not just a figure of speech. The overstimulated kids were literally bouncing off the walls. Lunar gravity is the worst thing to ever happen to parents.
”
”
Andy Weir (Artemis)
“
Always remember: your altar is you. Always remember—your life is your altar. You adorn it with your intentions, your thoughts, the quality of your breath, and how you need to be held. How you treat yourself, express yourself, and carry yourself is the magic!
”
”
Sarah Faith Gottesdiener (The Moon Book: Lunar Magic to Change Your Life)
“
A Word with Jose Rodriguez-Feo"
As one of the secretaries of the moon
The queen of ignorance, you have deplored
How she presides over imbeciles. The night
Makes everything grotesque. Is it because
Night is the nature of man's interior world?
Is lunar Habana the Cuba of the self?
We must enter boldly that interior world
To pick up relaxations of the known.
For example, the old man selling oranges
Sleeps by his basket. He snores. His bloated breath
Bursts back. what not quite realized transit
Of ideas moves wrinkled in a motion like
The cry of an embryo? the spirit tires,
It has, long since, grown tired, of such ideas.
It says there is an absolute grotesque.
There is a nature that is grotesque within
The boulevards of the generals. Why should
We say that it is man's interior world
Or seeing the spent, unconscious shapes of night,
Pretend they are shapes of another consciousness?
The grotesque is not a visitation. It is
Not apparition but appearance, part
Of that simplified geography, in which
The sun comes up like news from Africa.
”
”
Wallace Stevens
“
Alpha. Cress leaned forward, propping her elbows on her knees. “Like the star?” “What star?” She stiffened, instantly embarrassed, and scooted back from him again. “Oh. Um. In a constellation, the brightest star is called the alpha. I thought maybe you meant that she’s … like … your brightest star.” Looking away, she knotted her hands in her lap, aware that she was blushing furiously now and this beast of a man was about to realize what an over-romantic sap she was. But instead of sneering or laughing, Wolf sighed. “Yes,” he said, his gaze climbing up to the full moon that had emerged over the city. “Exactly like that.” With
”
”
Marissa Meyer (Cress (The Lunar Chronicles, #3))
“
4.5 billion years ago, an object the size of Mars crashed into Earth, blowing out enough material to form a companion sphere, the Moon. Within weeks, it is thought, the flung material had reassembled itself into a single clump, and within a year it had formed into the spherical rock that companions us yet. Most of the lunar material, it is thought, came from the Earth’s crust, not its core, which is why the Moon has so little iron while we have a lot. The theory, incidentally, is almost always presented as a recent one, but in fact it was first proposed in the 1940s by Reginald Daly of Harvard. The only recent thing about it is people paying any attention to
”
”
Bill Bryson (A Short History of Nearly Everything)
“
Collins was in the space capsule all alone. While his partners were down there collecting rocks, Collins was manning the wheel. Twenty-six times he circled the moon—solo. Imagine? He was completely out of radio contact. Couldn’t talk to his partners. Couldn’t talk to NASA. He was cut off from every living soul in the universe. If he panicked, if he fucked up, if he pushed the wrong button, he’d strand Armstrong and Aldrin. Or if they did something wrong, if their lunar car broke down, if they couldn’t restart the thing, if they couldn’t blast off and reconnect with Collins forty-five miles above the moon, he’d have to head back to earth all by himself. Leave his partners to die. Slowly running out of air. While watching earth in the distance. It was such a real possibility, Collins returning to earth by himself, that Nixon wrote up a speech to the nation. Collins—now that’s one stone-cold wheelman. That’s the guy you want sitting at the wheel of a gassed-up Ford while you’re inside a bank.
”
”
J.R. Moehringer (Sutton)
“
About 4.6 billion years ago, a great swirl of gas and dust some 15 billion miles across accumulated in space where we are now and began to aggregate. Virtually all of it—99.9 percent of the mass of the solar system—went to make the Sun. Out of the floating material that was left over, two microscopic grains floated close enough together to be joined by electrostatic forces. This was the moment of conception for our planet. All over the inchoate solar system, the same was happening. Colliding dust grains formed larger and larger clumps. Eventually the clumps grew large enough to be called planetesimals. As these endlessly bumped and collided, they fractured or split or recombined in endless random permutations, but in every encounter there was a winner, and some of the winners grew big enough to dominate the orbit around which they traveled. It all happened remarkably quickly. To grow from a tiny cluster of grains to a baby planet some hundreds of miles across is thought to have taken only a few tens of thousands of years. In just 200 million years, possibly less, the Earth was essentially formed, though still molten and subject to constant bombardment from all the debris that remained floating about. At this point, about 4.5 billion years ago, an object the size of Mars crashed into Earth, blowing out enough material to form a companion sphere, the Moon. Within weeks, it is thought, the flung material had reassembled itself into a single clump, and within a year it had formed into the spherical rock that companions us yet. Most of the lunar material, it is thought, came from the Earth’s crust, not its core, which is why the Moon has so little iron while we have a lot. The theory, incidentally, is almost always presented as a recent one, but in fact it was first proposed in the 1940s by Reginald Daly of Harvard. The only recent thing about it is people paying any attention to it. When Earth was only about a third of its eventual size, it was probably already beginning to form an atmosphere, mostly of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, methane, and sulfur. Hardly the sort of stuff that we would associate with life, and yet from this noxious stew life formed. Carbon dioxide is a powerful greenhouse gas. This was a good thing because the Sun was significantly dimmer back then. Had we not had the benefit of a greenhouse effect, the Earth might well have frozen over permanently, and life might never have gotten a toehold. But somehow life did. For the next 500 million years the young Earth continued to be pelted relentlessly by comets, meteorites, and other galactic debris, which brought water to fill the oceans and the components necessary for the successful formation of life. It was a singularly hostile environment and yet somehow life got going. Some tiny bag of chemicals twitched and became animate. We were on our way. Four billion years later people began to wonder how it had all happened. And it is there that our story next takes us.
”
”
Bill Bryson (A Short History of Nearly Everything)
“
if animals can get more than they actually require to subsist, they take it, don’t they? If there’s been a battle or a plague, the hyenas and vultures take advantage of the abundance to overeat. Isn’t it the same with us? Forests died in great quantities some millions of years ago. Man has unearthed their corpses, finds he can use them and is giving himself the luxury of a real good guzzle while the carrion lasts. When the supplies are exhausted, he’ll go back to short rations, as the hyenas do in the intervals between wars and epidemics.’ Illidge spoke with gusto. Talking about human beings as though they were indistinguishable from maggots filled him with a peculiar satisfaction. ‘A coal field’s discovered; oil’s struck. Towns spring up, railways are built, ships come and go. To a long-lived observer on the moon, the swarming and crawling must look like the pullulation of ants and flies round a dead dog. Chilean nitre, Mexican oil, Tunisian phosphates—at every discovery another scurrying of insects. One can imagine the comments of the lunar astronomers. “These creatures have a remarkable and perhaps unique tropism towards fossilized carrion.”’ ‘Like
”
”
Aldous Huxley (Point Counter Point)
“
Sweet Crescent Moon, up in the sky, Won’t you sing your song to Earth as she passes by? Your sweetest silver melody, a rhythm and a rhyme, A lullaby of pleasant dreams as you make your climb. Send the forests off to bed, the mountains tuck in tight, Rock the ocean gently, and the deserts kiss good night. Sweet Crescent Moon, up in the sky, You sing your song so sweetly after sunshine passes by.
”
”
Marissa Meyer (Stars Above: A Lunar Chronicles Collection (The Lunar Chronicles, #4.5))
“
At the time of the New Moon, ideas are coming from the ether and we must decide which of them we want to latch onto. We need to remember that anything is possible. This is definitely the time to think about what you do want, and not think about what you don’t want. Meditate on your dreams. That will allow you to tune in to your higher self, so you have all the guidance you need to move towards them.
”
”
Yasmin Boland (Moonology: Working with the Magic of Lunar Cycles)
“
Within a year, possibly by next fall," he was saying, "something that has never before been done, will be done. NASA will be sending men to the moon. Think of that. Men who were once in classrooms like this one will leave their footprints on the lunar surface." He paused. I leaned in close against the wall so I could hear him. "That is why you are sitting here tonight, and why you will be coming here in the months ahead. You come to dream dreams. You come to build fantastic castles up in the air. And you come to learn how to build the foundations that make those castles real. When the men who will command that mission were boys your age, no one knew. But in a few months, that's what will happen. So, twenty years from now, what will people say of you? 'No one knew then that this kid Washington Irving High School would grow up to do'...what? What castle will you build?
”
”
Gary D. Schmidt
“
Long ago, darkness reigned over the night. People were afraid and remained inside their shelters from sundown until sunrise. The goddess Selene saw their fear and gave light to their nocturnal world by driving her moon chariot across the starry sky. She followed her brother Helios, who rode the sun and caught his shining rays on her magnificent silver chariot, then cast them down to earth as moonbeams. She felt pride in the way the earthlings were comforted by her light.
But one night when she had abandoned her chariot to walk upon the earth, she noticed that in times of trouble many people lost all hope. Their despair bewildered her. After considering their plight, she knew how she could make her moon the greatest gift from the gods.
From then on she drove around the earth and each night caught her brother's rays from a different angle. This way the face of the moon was everchanging. People watched the moon decrease in light every night, until it could no longer be seen from the earth. Then after three nights of darkness, a crescent sliver returned and the moon increased in light until it was fully illuminated as before. Selene did this to remind people that their darkest times can lead them to their brightest.
The ancients understood Selene's gift in the lunar phases. Each night when they gazed at the moon, they knew Selene was telling them to never give up hope.
”
”
Lynne Ewing (The Secret Scroll (Daughters of the Moon, #4))
“
Curious?” This second man was tall as a lamp post. His pale face, lunar pockmarks denting it, cast light on those who stood below. His vest was the color of fresh blood. His eyebrows, his hair, his suit were licorice black, and the sun-yellow gem which stared from the tie pin thrust in his cravat was the same unblinking shade and bright crystal as his eyes. But in this instant, swiftly, and with utter clearness, it was the suit which fascinated Will. For it seemed woven of boar-bramble, clock-spring hair, bristle, and a sort of ever-trembling, ever-glistening dark hemp. The suit caught light and stirred like a bed of black tweed-thorns, interminably itching, covering the man’s long body with motion so it seemed he should excruciate, cry out, and tear the clothes free. Yet here he stood, moon-calm, inhabiting his itch-weed suit and watching Jim’s mouth with his yellow eyes. He never looked once at Will. “The name is Dark.
”
”
Ray Bradbury (Something Wicked This Way Comes (Green Town, #2))
“
Yes,’ he replied, ‘absolutely sans mademoiselle; for I am to take mademoiselle to the moon, and there I shall seek a cave in one of the white valleys among the volcano-tops, and mademoiselle shall live with me there, and only me.’
‘She will have nothing to eat: you will starve her,’ observed Adele.
‘I shall gather manna for her morning and night: the plains and hillsides in the moon are bleached with manna, Adele.’
‘She will want to warm herself: what will she do for a fire?’
‘Fire rises out of the lunar mountains: when she is cold, I’ll carry her up to a peak, and lay her down on the edge of a crater.’
‘Oh, qu’ elle y sera mal—peu comfortable! And her clothes, they will wear out: how can she get new ones?’
Mr. Rochester professed to be puzzled. ‘Hem!’ said he. ‘What would you do, Adele? Cudgel your brains for an expedient. How would a white or a pink cloud answer for a gown, do you think? And one could cut a pretty enough scarf out of a rainbow.
”
”
Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)
“
I never liked North America, even first trip. It is not most
crowded part of Terra, has a mere billion people. In Bombay they sprawl
on pavements; in Great New York they pack them vertically--not sure
anyone sleeps. Was glad to be in invalid's chair.
Is mixed-up place another way; they care about skin color--by
making point of how they don't care. First trip I was always too light or
too dark, and somehow blamed either way, or was always being expected to
take stand on things I have no opinions on. Bog knows I don't know what
genes I have. One grandmother came from a part of Asia where invaders
passed as regularly as locusts, raping as they went--why not ask her?
Learned to handle it by my second makee-learnee but it left a sour
taste. Think I prefer a place as openly racist as India, where if you
aren't Hindu, you're nobody--except that Parsees look down on Hindus and
vice versa. However I never really had to cope with North America's
reverse-racism when being "Colonel O' Kelly Davis, Hero of Lunar Freedom.
”
”
Robert A. Heinlein (The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress)
“
IN THE BEGINNING…WAS a very female sea. For two-and-a-half billion years on earth, all lifeforms floated in the womb-like environment of the planetary ocean – nourished and protected by its fluid chemicals, rocked by the lunar-tidal rhythms. Charles Darwin believed the menstrual cycle originated here, organically echoing the moon-pulse of the sea. And, because this longest period of life’s time on earth was dominated by marine forms reproducing parthenogenetically, he concluded that the female principle was primordial
”
”
Ruth Barrett (Female Erasure: What You Need to Know About Gender Politics' War on Women, the Female Sex and Human Rights)
“
Alien monsters were pleasant and funny. One early and almost forgotten piece of history tells that Adam, in addition to naming all the sub-lunar creatures, also named the nine hundred and ninety-nine species of creatures who had their homes and nests above the moon, on other moons or trabants or asteroids or planets. And after they were named, the super-lunary creatures went back to their own places, with friendly memories of Earth, the ‘naming place’. So we do have nine hundred and ninety-nine alien species, monstrous but friendly, waiting to meet us again.
”
”
R.A. Lafferty (It's Down the Slippery Cellar Stairs (Essays on Fantastic Literature 1))
“
I can claim a few successes as a minor prophet. I placed the first lunar impact in 1959, and Luna II hit the Mare Imbrium at 21:01 GMT on September 13, 1959. I was watching hopefully through my Questar telescope in Columbo as the Moon sank into the Indian Ocean, but saw nothing. Prelude to Space was written just two years after my 1945 paper on synchronous communications satellites and was, therefore, the first work of fiction in which the idea of “comsats” was advocated. I have reason to believe that it had some influence on the men who turned this dream into reality.
”
”
Arthur C. Clarke (Prelude to Space)
“
That August, the day of the lunar eclipse—their daughters three and a half and two—Cam piled everyone in the truck to get the best view from the top of Hopewell Hill. “Maybe they won’t remember,” he said. “I just like to show them things.” This was what you did. You took your children out in the darkness to watch the moon disappear. You dissected coyote scat with them. You led your two-year-old down to the garden to press a handful of radish seeds into the soil and handed her the spatula to lick when you made chocolate pudding and turned the pages of Richard Scarry’s What Do People Do All Day?, pointing out the animal characters and naming their jobs. You gathered autumn leaves, pressed them with an iron in between two sheets of wax paper, and taped them on the window, where you’d set an avocado seed in a glass of water to watch it sprout; and carried your three-year-old outside in your arms at night—her and her sister—to let them catch snowflakes. Who knew what they’d remember, and what they’d make of it, but the hope was there that if nothing else, what they would hold on to from these times was the knowledge of being deeply loved.
”
”
Joyce Maynard (Count the Ways)
“
In ancient times, it was said that the goddess Selene drove the moon across the sky. Each night she followed her brother Helios, the sun, to catch his fiery rays and reflect the light back to earth. One night on her journey, she looked down and saw Endymion sleeping in the hills. She fell in love with the beautiful shepherd. Night after night she looked down on his gentle beauty and loved him more, until finally one evening she left the moon between the sun and the earth and went down to the grassy fields to lie beside him.
For three nights she stayed with him, and the moon, unable to catch the sun's rays, remained dark. People feared the dark moon. They said it brought death and freed evil forces to roam the black night. Zeus, King of the Gods, was angered by the darkness and punished Selene by giving Endymion eternal sleep.
Selene returned to the moon and drove it across the night sky, but her love was too strong. She hid Endymion in a cave; and now, three nights each lunar month, she leaves the moon to visit her sleeping lover and cover him with silver kisses. In his sleep, Endymion dreams he holds the moon. He has given Selene many daughters to guard the night. They are powerful and beautiful like their mother, and mortal like their father.
”
”
Lynne Ewing (Goddess of the Night)
“
The thunderstorm she’s wearing, the clouds, the lightning flashing down her legs and the sound effects are no big deal. But the 1G rain is a serious engineering problem. For all of us, when we have experienced rain, it has been during a Direct Interface Lifetime, in subjective conditions of 1-Gravity. Lunar rain, at 1/6th Gravity, just doesn’t look real. Therefore, her dress has a hollow cylindrical 5K spin-2 graviton Field, to make the rain fall at 1G without weighing her down a metric ton. If it’s engineered right, she shouldn’t feel a bit heavier. That’s almost 6990-megawatts right there. The other 10-megawatts or so is mostly rain choreography.
”
”
@hg47 (Daughter Moon)
“
Hearth-brothers, or friends,” he said, and saying it was remote, out of reach, two feet from me in a tent eight feet across. No answer to that. What is more arrogant than honesty? Cooled, I climbed into my fur bag. “Good night, Ai,” said the alien, and the other alien said, “Good night, Harth.” A friend. What is a friend, in a world where any friend may be a lover at a new phase of the moon? Not I, locked in my virility: no friend to Therem Harth, or any other of his race. Neither man nor woman, neither and both, cyclic, lunar, metamorphosing under the hand’s touch, changelings in the human cradle, they were no flesh of mine, no friends; no love between us.
”
”
Ursula K. Le Guin (The Left Hand of Darkness)
“
I should have been happy: as I had dreamed, I was alone with her, that intimacy with the Moon I had so often envied my cousin and with Mrs Vhd Vhd was now my exclusive prerogative, a month of days and lunar nights stretched uninterrupted before us, the crust of the satellite nourished us with its milk, whose tart flavour was familiar to us, we raised our eyes up, up to the world where we had been born, finally traversed in all its various expanse, explored landscapes no Earth-being had ever seen, or else we contemplated the stars beyond the Moon, big as pieces of fruit, made of light, ripened on the curved branches of the sky, and everything exceeded my most luminous hopes, and yet, and yet, it was, instead, exile.
”
”
Italo Calvino (The Distance of the Moon)
“
About 4.6 billion years ago, a great swirl of gas and dust some 24 billion kilometres across accumulated in space where we are now and began to aggregate. Virtually all of it – 99.9 per cent of the mass of the solar system21 – went to make the Sun. Out of the floating material that was left over, two microscopic grains floated close enough together to be joined by electrostatic forces. This was the moment of conception for our planet. All over the inchoate solar system, the same was happening. Colliding dust grains formed larger and larger clumps. Eventually the clumps grew large enough to be called planetesimals. As these endlessly bumped and collided, they fractured or split or recombined in endless random permutations, but in every encounter there was a winner, and some of the winners grew big enough to dominate the orbit around which they travelled. It all happened remarkably quickly. To grow from a tiny cluster of grains to a baby planet some hundreds of kilometres across is thought to have taken only a few tens of thousands of years. In just 200 million years, possibly less22, the Earth was essentially formed, though still molten and subject to constant bombardment from all the debris that remained floating about. At this point, about 4.4 billion years ago, an object the size of Mars crashed into the Earth, blowing out enough material to form a companion sphere, the Moon. Within weeks, it is thought, the flung material had reassembled itself into a single clump, and within a year it had formed into the spherical rock that companions us yet. Most of the lunar material, it is thought, came from the Earth’s crust, not its core23, which is why the Moon has so little iron while we have a lot. The theory, incidentally, is almost always presented as a recent one, but in fact it was first proposed in the 1940s by Reginald Daly of Harvard24. The only recent thing about it is people paying any attention to it. When the Earth was only about a third of its eventual size, it was probably already beginning to form an atmosphere, mostly of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, methane and sulphur. Hardly the sort of stuff that we would associate with life, and yet from this noxious stew life formed. Carbon dioxide is a powerful greenhouse gas. This was a good thing, because the Sun was significantly dimmer back then. Had we not had the benefit of a greenhouse effect, the Earth might well have frozen over permanently25, and life might never have got a toehold. But somehow life did. For the next 500 million years the young Earth continued to be pelted relentlessly by comets, meteorites and other galactic debris, which brought water to fill the oceans and the components necessary for the successful formation of life. It was a singularly hostile environment, and yet somehow life got going. Some tiny bag of chemicals twitched and became animate. We were on our way. Four billion years later, people began to wonder how it had all happened. And it is there that our story next takes us.
”
”
Bill Bryson (A Short History of Nearly Everything)
“
No direct evidence yet documents Earth’s tidal cycles more than a billion years ago, but we can be confident that 4.5 billion years ago things were a lot wilder. Not only did Earth have five-hour days, but the nearby Moon was much, much faster in its close orbit, as well. The Moon took only eighty-four hours—three and a half modern days—to go around Earth. With Earth spinning so fast and the Moon orbiting so fast, the familiar cycle of new Moon, waxing Moon, full Moon, and waning Moon played out in frenetic fast-forward: every few five-hour days saw a new lunar phase. Lots of consequences follow from this truth, some less benign than others. With such a big lunar obstruction in the sky and such rapid orbital motions, eclipses would have been frequent events. A total solar eclipse would have occurred every eighty-four hours at virtually every new Moon, when the Moon was positioned between Earth and the Sun. For some few minutes, sunlight would have been completely blocked, while the stars and planets suddenly popped out against a black sky, and the Moon’s fiery volcanoes and magma oceans stood out starkly red against the black lunar disk. Total lunar eclipses occurred regularly as well, almost every forty-two hours later, like clockwork. During every full Moon, when Earth lies right between the Sun and the Moon, Earth’s big shadow would have completely obscured the giant face of the bright shining Moon. Once again the stars and planets would have suddenly popped out against a black sky, as the Moon’s volcanoes put on their ruddy show. Monster tides were a far more violent consequence of the Moon’s initial proximity. Had both Earth and the Moon been perfectly rigid solid bodies, they would appear today much as they did 4.5 billion years ago: 15,000 miles apart with rapid rotational and orbital motions and frequent eclipses. But Earth and the Moon are not rigid. Their rocks can flex and bend; especially when molten, they swell and recede with the tides. The young Moon, at a distance of 15,000 miles, exerted tremendous tidal forces on Earth’s rocks, even as Earth exerted an equal and opposite gravitational force on the largely molten lunar landscape. It’s difficult to imagine the immense magma tides that resulted. Every few hours Earth’s largely molten rocky surface may have bulged a mile or more outward toward the Moon, generating tremendous internal friction, adding more heat and thus keeping the surface molten far longer than on an isolated planet. And Earth’s gravity returned the favor, bulging the Earth-facing side of the Moon outward, deforming our satellite out of perfect roundness.
”
”
Robert M. Hazen (The Story of Earth: The First 4.5 Billion Years, from Stardust to Living Planet)
“
Attention All Students, the following is a safety notice and we advise you take all of the information in this notification seriously. Tonight is the LUNAR ECLIPSE. All Fae will be struck by the urges of the moon and will be guided by their most base instincts and the truest desires of their hearts and flesh. As such, the faculty have made the following recommendations: 1. Remain alone in your rooms throughout the evening with the door locked. 2. Turn off your Atlases to avoid the temptation to send provocative messages to your fellow students via social media. 3. Take a sleeping draft or two to try and bypass the night without succumbing to the urges. 4. Make sure you have cast your monthly contraceptive spells so that when rules 1-3 fail to work you will not come crying to the faculty about unexpected pregnancies. Please try to remain safe and enjoy your evening. - Principal Nova.
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Caroline Peckham (The Reckoning (Zodiac Academy, #3))
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People with wombs have always known that bodies and consciousness are cyclical, tied to a rhythm that is larger than the individual. The cycle is twenty-eight days, full moon to full moon. Moon sounds like a name or a noun. But let us remember that moon is a gerund. Always moving. Always moon-ing. It is time to give the masculine back its lunar knowledge. Wombs swell, yearn, mulch, and release in twenty-eight days. But a womb is not just an organ. It is an invitation that anyone of any physicality and any gender expression can accept. It is an invitation to dance inside change for twenty-eight days. To practice softness for a cycle. The masculine has a womb, too. A moon. All it need do is look up at the night sky. What is lunar wisdom? Even on a new moon night, the moon is still present: replete and whole, while also void and occluded. This is a completion that holds loss tenderly inside its body. It is neatly summed up by Octavia Butler’s powerful words: “God is change.”1 The moon is every gender, every sexuality, mostly both, always trans: waxing and waning. The moon only ever flirts with fullness or emptiness for a brief, tenuous moment before slipping into change. Here is our blended, androgynous Dionysus. Wine-drunk, love-swollen, wind-swept, in ecstatic union with the holy, the moon encourages us to dissolve our edges rather than affirm them. Lunar knowledge keeps us limber. Keeps us resilient. Awe, whether somatic or spiritual, transforms us. The alternative to patriarchy and sky gods is not equal and opposite. It is not a patriarchy with a woman seated on a throne. The Sacred Masculine isn’t a horned warrior bowing down to his impassive empress. The divine, although it includes us, is mostly inhuman. Mutable. Mostly green. Often microscopic. And it is everything in between. Interstitial and relational. The light and the dark. Moonlight on moving water. The lunar bowl where we all mix and love and change.
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Sophie Strand (The Flowering Wand: Rewilding the Sacred Masculine)
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An Aside To break with this routine I have written this manuscript in a way that challenges my reader to explore on the edge of language instead of drowning in devices intending to take for granted meanings and draw false assumptions burdened by planted biases. In your face are thrown one lie after another that defy what is actually seen and offer nothing of balance to either perspective or clarity on a daily basis... yet, it seems natural to you. Because there is no power to your sense of expectation. None. You are boxed into what is possible and what is not, even unsure of the shape of the earth. Led into debates over something as idiotic as that while you balk at having neighbors from elsewhere. So enormous is this Universe and yet you would limit its possibility to produce any of the wonders on some tiny grain of sand found on a beach in comparison. From written history anomalies have been spied and reported accomplishing what nothing today can. Trans Lunar Phenomena, recorded hundreds of years with thousands of reports demonstrate intelligent presence on the moon while nothing of this is factored into your narrow credulity. When one emerges who can answer resolution to so many anomaly, predicts events with accuracy, and offers what is needed to help you survive a planet crippled to the point of extinction, you cannot quit your routine of acquired preference for the mundane suited to a boxed-in comfort zone long enough to check him out. The few above this are too few. I feel quite privileged to have found four. Others are awakening yet still not shown to be at a point of no return to stifling group thought. If you are, then show me. Show me you are aware we near the point where nothing is left to lose. Where resolute action need not be possessed of fear. I will say this, unified consciousness would have no trouble with accepting this challenge I throw at your feet, but then conditions so favorable to enslavement here may be your problem and not that solely attributable to split consciousness. I am willing to engage with you to the very end of hope to find out. Wake up to the signs and ramifications of the trends set I have touched upon. Help awaits a world ready to receive it.
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James C. Horak (Siege in the Davis Mountains)
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All the many successes and extraordinary accomplishments of the Gemini still left NASA’s leadership in a quandary. The question voiced in various expressions cut to the heart of the problem: “How can we send men to the moon, no matter how well they fly their ships, if they’re pretty helpless when they get there? We’ve racked up rendezvous, docking, double-teaming the spacecraft, starting, stopping, and restarting engines; we’ve done all that. But these guys simply cannot work outside their ships without exhausting themselves and risking both their lives and their mission. We’ve got to come up with a solution, and quick!” One manned Gemini mission remained on the flight schedule. Veteran Jim Lovell would command the Gemini 12, and his space-walking pilot would be Buzz Aldrin, who built on the experience of the others to address all problems with incredible depth and finesse. He took along with him on his mission special devices like a wrist tether and a tether constructed in the same fashion as one that window washers use to keep from falling off ledges. The ruby slippers of Dorothy of Oz couldn’t compare with the “golden slippers” Aldrin wore in space—foot restraints, resembling wooden Dutch shoes, that he could bolt to a work station in the Gemini equipment bay. One of his neatest tricks was to bring along portable handholds he could slap onto either the Gemini or the Agena to keep his body under control. A variety of space tools went into his pressure suit to go along with him once he exited the cabin. On November 11, 1966, the Gemini 12, the last of its breed, left earth and captured its Agena quarry. Then Buzz Aldrin, once and for all, banished the gremlins of spacewalking. He proved so much a master at it that he seemed more to be taking a leisurely stroll through space than attacking the problems that had frustrated, endangered, and maddened three previous astronauts and brought grave doubts to NASA leadership about the possible success of the manned lunar program. Aldrin moved down the nose of the Gemini to the Agena like a weightless swimmer, working his way almost effortlessly along a six-foot rail he had locked into place once he was outside. Next came looping the end of a hundred-foot line from the Agena to the Gemini for a later experiment, the job that had left Dick Gordon in a sweatbox of exhaustion. Aldrin didn’t show even a hint of heavy breathing, perspiration, or an increased heartbeat. When he spoke, his voice was crisp, sharp, clear. What he did seemed incredibly easy, but it was the direct result of his incisive study of the problems and the equipment he’d brought from earth. He also made sure to move in carefully timed periods, resting between major tasks, and keeping his physical exertion to a minimum. When he reached the workstation in the rear of the Gemini, he mounted his feet and secured his body to the ship with the waist tether. He hooked different equipment to the ship, dismounted other equipment, shifted them about, and reattached them. He used a unique “space wrench” to loosen and tighten bolts with effortless skill. He snipped wires, reconnected wires, and connected a series of tubes. Mission Control hung on every word exchanged between the two astronauts high above earth. “Buzz, how do those slippers work?” Aldrin’s enthusiastic voice came back like music. “They’re great. Great! I don’t have any trouble positioning my body at all.” And so it went, a monumental achievement right at the end of the Gemini program. Project planners had reached all the way to the last inch with one crucial problem still unsolved, and the man named Aldrin had whipped it in spectacular fashion on the final flight. Project Gemini was
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Alan Shepard (Moon Shot: The Inside Story of America's Race to the Moon)