because the light

(originally posted 2/12/2020)

Before there were people to invent the old gods they both existed and didn’t exist. Back then both the sun and the moon circled the Earth in an endless dance of light and dark and when there were finally faces to turn towards both of them the old gods came into being and were both the stories of the sun and the moon and the sun and the moon themselves.

The moon, a byproduct of an earlier relationship between the Earth and a passing meteor, has always had a rocky history with the sun.

The old gods, who both exist and are a figment of our collective imaginations, are at the mercy of a good story, and the only stories worth telling, according to the beings that stare up at them and invent them and deny them, have to do with love, and sometimes sunsets and tides simply aren’t enough.

So these entities that have been created must create and meddle, and, being the stuff of legends, make wonderful decisions and terrible decisions, and these decisions end up changing everything and nothing in the lives of those on Earth. The muses that they influence both change lives and make no difference whatsoever, based solely on where the sun and the moon are at any particular moment.

There are the moon people and there are the sun people and, like their astronomical counterparts, they attract and repel, gravitating to light and dark and filling both with their preconceptions and fears and hopes. So the sun and moon, eager to be the old gods they are and aren’t and long to be again, send down their inspirations to the vessels that seem the most willing and able, and speak to their subjects in rhyme and then sit back and laugh and curse themselves as these words inspire and confuse and are taken literally and as metaphors and have the desired effects and create unintended consequences.

The vessels, greater than the sun and moon and yet imperfect and filled with hubris that would rival any of the old gods, screw it up with both good and bad intentions. The old gods shake their heads and laugh and cry.

Desire and hunger is the fire I breathe

Just stay in my bed till the morning comes

Just around the corner til the light of day

The only song worth singing is a song about love. So the sun and the moon and the sun people and the moon people dance to the tunes, in orbit, bathed in the glow of physics and philosophy, hope and despair.

The vicious circle turns and burns

I got a little lost along the way

Of course I still love you.

Of course I always will.

Stay with me now till the mornin’ comes

Your love is here and now

I’m just around the corner til the light of day