BY LESLIE REGO
It is two o’clock in the early hours of the morning. I am wide awake. The last full moon of the decade has me captivated. The December full moon, also known as the “Cold Moon” or the “Long Night Moon,” is high in the sky overlooking the snowy landscape. Stars surround the glowing disk. As I watch, I am witnessing grandeur. The moment is part homey, since I am snug in my house, and part awe. The snow has a green cast. Navy-blue shadows starting at the base of the trees undulate over the terrain.
Many people love to read a book in bed, but some books require a certain posture, perhaps curled up in an armchair, or from time to time sitting straight at a desk. The poet Shelley wrote, “my custom is to undress, and sit on the rocks, reading Herodotus, until the perspiration has expired.”
Marguerite Duras, a French novelist, confessed that she seldom read on a beach or in a garden. She goes on to say, “you can’t read by two lights at once, the light of day and the light of the book. You should read by electric light, the room in shadow, and only the page lit up.”
My only light tonight is from this radiant orb. The room is in shadow and my world in front of me is lit up. My “moon” is asking me to sit on the floor by the window with a blanket wrapped tight around my body.
When we read, we become mesmerized by the story. Time becomes motionless. Reading allows for an eternal conversation across centuries and space. Readers that devoured a book hundreds of years ago converse with us as we pour over the identical book in present time.
I am in a cocoon, conversing with the moon, having the same conversation that many have had millennia before me. I am held within the caress of the luminous sphere, an embrace that is as old as time itself.
Leslie Rego is an Idaho Press Club award-winning columnist, artist and Blaine County resident. To view more of Rego’s art, visit www.leslierego.com.
