Magic of a full moon
 

by Aditha Dissanayake

"There's a full moon over my shoulder/ and an old love in my heart". Seated on the steps of a porch made of dried cow-dung, overlooking a paddy field glistening in the moonlight, above the sound of crickets I am listening to my soul mate - my roommate - my Other self, all rolled into one, humming an old favorite he had obviously picked up from my mother.

Even though this is the first time I have heard him sing Jim Reeves, instead of teasing him about his choice of a Golden Oldie, I begin to write this with the only light available, the rays of the full moon.

Tonight we will be sleeping in a daub and wattle hut on 25 acres of abandoned coconut land in Serukelai. (three hour's drive from Colombo, off Bungadeniya via Chilaw) Yes! Having yesterday added a new meaning to the word "madness" by pooling our life times savings and purchasing 25 acres of abandoned land, we two city mice have come in search of the calm and quiet the village mouse used to boast about.

Minus electricity and telephones, cooking our meals on a wood fire, drawing water from an abandoned tank, this is our way of searching for the simplicity Rousseau yearned for.

Ensconced in total isolation, (our nearest neighbor, an 80 year old bachelor is 25 acres away) when I lift my eyes I see the full moon, like the disk on a carom board. Can everyone else I know, scattered all over the world see the same moon that I am seeing right now? Will the rich grandson of a rich businessman who had told me he will be in a club tonight, see a glimpse of it as he leaves for home shortly before day-break? Will my best friend see it as she puts her baby to sleep in her apartment in New York? Would you be looking at this same moon that I'm seeing right now? Yes, someone already has seen it. David Lyman, the Journalist from Detroit, who is in New Zealand.

He has written in an e-mail titled "moonbeams", "The full moon here is quite remarkable as it comes up over the mountains. Before you even see the moon itself, it illuminates the clouds and makes it look as if the top of the mountain is on fire.

Finally, it comes bobbing over the top and so that you can see the jagged outline of the mountains. That is my favorite moment of the moonrise here. More so, even, than when the moon is high in the sky.... David"

Back to me and my moonlit writing. The night sky over Serukelai is not black tonight. It is more like the color of a dark blue denim. I make out the famous constellation of "Orion the Hunter", and recall the Greek myth about Artemis, the Huntress who slews Orion!

Gazing at the stars I forget the worries hovering on my mind, the strains of living in a society that demands conformity, gradually fade and I realize how infinitesimal I am, and how pointless my tiny anxieties.

Back to the moon once more, called Diana, the goddess of chastity by the Romans. But for hungry stomachs the yellow circle looks like a plate full of coconut gravy (kiri hodi) than a "pale faced Cynthia" praisd by poets from time immemorial.

We decide its time to have the two roti we had baked on the hearth a short while ago and turn in for the night.

But before that we can't help grinning at each other, when the radio, which till now has been dead, crackles mysteriously back into life and somebody begins to sing "Someday I'll find you/Moonlight behind you/True to the dream I am dreaming".