On lunacy
by Michel Heitzmann
© Michel Heitzmann - A lunatic looks up
The moon runs things.
Entire ecosystems release eggs simultaneously on the same full moon, coordinated across hundreds of kilometers of ocean. Sea turtles find their beaches by it. Dung beetles walk in straight lines by it. Plankton migrate through the ocean every month in response to the light of a rock 380,000 kilometers away. Lions hunt differently around it. Moths evolved to fly by it. For humans, the moon is a god, a planet, a timekeeper, and a calendar. The Greeks had Selene, the Romans Luna, the Hindus Chandra, the Japanese Tsukuyomi.
The Aztecs saw fertility and rebirth, and the Chinese have a Moon Festival every autumn rooted in the belief that a woman lives there along with the Jade Rabbit. That one makes sense to me as I divorced twice.
Every civilization builds around the moon because it tracks human reproduction as much as it tracks seasons.
Easter weekend? The church used the moon because the pilgrims needed its light to travel at night on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox. A 1,700-year-old algorithm, still running, albeit confusing us all when the Julian tribe (orthodox) went one way and the Gregorian (Rome) one the other.
Humans went indoors with candles and LED. The body kept the rhythm but we might not notice anymore. The language though kept the memory as in lunatics along menstruating loonies talk lunacy every Monday of every month. Same with lundi or lunes.
At time of publication four humans are flying towards the Moon in a capsule the size of a large shower. The engineering is extraordinary. I did not care much until the press office spoke. For all humanity.
Give me a break. Humanity was not consulted. The Artemis program is a $100 billion thing. Humanity is $350 million short of feeding children in the Congo. UNICEF just took a 20% budget cut. The World Food Programme needs $16.9 billion to feed 123 million people for a year.
The entire annual funding for conservation work is about $3 billion. One Artemis launch $4 billion: some lunatics need to hurry before the Chinese.
The moon has been for all of us, every insomniac, farmer, sailor, coral polyp, dung beetle, plant and my dogs for 4.5 billion years.
I went outside with one of my cameras. If that makes me a loonie, I am in good company.
The world is loud. Yours doesn’t have to be.
Full disclosure: I did not put a cent in the Artemis program and am human but neither Chinese nor American.
Moon blues 🎵