Three Moon Night: A Lunar Awakening To A Past Life (SWC)

i am realizing now that i
will always be this way
one who wanders
one who is lost
one with little words
one

February 1^st, 2018. I heard there were to be three moons to rise at dawn. This astrological phenomenon was set to be a modern historical event. The last time three moons rose in one night was in 1866, so long ago that at that time my great great grandparents from Scandinavia were still trying to carve a life for themselves here in the new America.

I didn’t feel like missing out on the photographic opportunity so I threw my camera in my bag, hung my jacket next to the bed, and I slept in my shirt and jeans. The moons were not to climax and give way to the third until six in the morning. So I set my alarm, tucked myself in and I slept in a bed that was not my own.

At the age of thirty-two, broke, alone and house sitting fifteen thousand miles away from home during a three moon night was never my idea of a satisfactory life. I dowsed off wondering if things could have been different had a taken a different road, or if life is always this way, a journey through this material plane that one must experience on his own.

A few hours later I awoke before my alarm. I gathered my things and I headed out the back door into the silver sting of the night. I crossed through the backyard and into a dense Carolina wood that lay at the opposite end of the property. The woods behind the house that I was caring for gradually rose a few hundred feet in elevation. Aside from convenience due to its close proximity, I figured it would be a perfect place to view the night’s celestial event, high above the rest of civilization who were stuck down in the valley below.

I scrambled my way through the woods and up a hellish hill. Tripping over uplifted roots and stumbling over loose rocks. I lost my footing several times slipping on wet leaves and banged my knees into the hard slope. Perhaps I underestimated the difficulty of the ascent. As I made my way, every dry snap of a stick beneath my boot sounded like small bones breaking off into the distance. The silence of the hour was unnerving and the sounds fire-crackering out unsettled me.

I was warned of bears in the area before I took up my post so when hidden critters scurried out from bushes and invisible birds rustled around in the branches above I kept finding myself more and more apparent of my mortality. Was I afraid to die? I didn’t think so, but when one finds himself walking through the woods alone, the thought tends to crop up more than usual. I couldn’t imagine making this journey on a pitch night. The spray of diffused light provided by the two moons slowly guided my way until I finally crested over the summit of the hill, revealing what I would have least expected, a hidden cemetery.

Before me sprawled an antiquated cemetery no younger than one hundred years. Situated above a small alcove, one that reached out into the Pacific Ocean, the cemetery was laid out in waves and gullies all the way to the foot of the hill. The entrance at the bottom was guarded by two large, rust-red gates that looked like they had not been cracked opened in decades.

I could see quit well given the state of the sky. The sea sparkled off and fell over the Eastern horizon. All the capsized headstones of the cemetery shone like a circuit board in the night. The space between each stone was the last stake of land these people would have ever claimed an ownership to. Smaller than a New York City apartment, narrower than the bed of a truck, the size of a house mat. “Welcome Home” they would say.

The temperament of the night was now chilly. Dew clung to all the vegetation. The sight of my own breath appeared like a frightened apparition in front of me, reminding me that I was still among the living as I made my way down rows and rows of the dead. There were only two moons in the sky, one blue and the other bigger than the circumference of my fist if I were to extend it out into the air. The third had not yet appeared, but it was the one this upper half of the hemisphere was waiting for.

I navigated my way through the cold stones and eerie silence of the cemetery and into a section that felt older than the rest. I figured this due to the scattered and unorganized way the graves were laid out. The rest of the headstones throughout the plot were organized in neat rows with most still standing upright, whereas as these were broken, chaotic, and strewn about, as if the bodies were just tossed over the gate and where they landed is where they were buried. I wondered if any extra care was taken to situate their feet downhill. How many of these poor souls lay upside down, all the worms rushing to their heads for the remainder of eternity.

While walking through the small scatter of weathered stones I came across one that was angled just right. Illuminated by the moon it read:

John Doe
1872,
“Might you one day come
to know yourself once again,
as you were before you were lost.”

John. Who was this man? I stood over his grave for a moment before finally deciding I had found my view point for the night’s spectacular. I would sit with John and I would watch the third moon rise with him, we would watch as it turns into blood. This night he would not have to be alone, and I too would appreciate the company.

I removed my shoes and grounded myself. I set my bag down, removed my camera as well as a blanket and I laid the blanket out over the damp, overgrown grass. I sat down and as I did, further down the hill towards what looked like a slightly new section of graves I noticed a figure move off into the distance.

I saw something laid out over the grass and eventually recognized it as a person laying down. No, two people, they were holding each other. Perhaps trying to keep warm, perhaps romantics. Love is resilient, it can find sleep anywhere, I thought. I watched the two for a few moments, but after a while my attention was averted back to the rare beauty that was unfurling above our heads.

Around 6:15, the moons were no longer high in the sky, but rather they lay low, not 20 degrees from the edge of the mountain’s ridge. I began to wonder if I would even catch the event. I could faintly see a shadow begin to crawl its way across the corner of the moons, but it would still be a good hour until the blood moon would fully emerge. As the minutes moved by and the moons inched their way down the Western slope towards the jagged horizon, I closed my eyes.

I was able to tune more keenly into my other senses. I lay there for a few minutes just listening to the dead silence of the cemetery. Fully awake and in a conscious state, eventually my mind began to wander. I thought about the body of the man who laid beneath me. I thought about, “John”. I wondered if he could feel me. If his spirit could sense mine, or was he long gone. I reached further, I wondered of his image, of his life, of his ancestry. I wondered if he had ever crossed paths with my great great grandfather since they would have been alive around the same time. Perhaps they were friends.

As I lay there, still wide awake, I could feel the heat of the double moons on my face. Their radiance began to warm my whole body. They were suddenly much brighter eyes closed than when open. It was in that moment of illumination that I allowed the spirit of my imagination to lead me down a road, one I had no record of, and it was along that road that I saw my grandfather three generations past for the first time. He was standing in front of a large tree, speaking to another man who was up inside the tree hanging by a harness and holding a saw-blade in his hand. I recognized at once that we were in Sweden, where my ancestry stems from.

The two men were talking back and forth in Swedish, but I could still understand them perfectly despite not knowing the language. They were discussing their strategy in cutting down the large tree that stood before them when all of a sudden I saw the tree began to bleed. Amber droplets were shedding from its millions of branches. I looked up but I saw no end to this tree they spoke of cutting down. As far as I could tell there was no end, which means its roots would have run equally as deep, with no beginning.

Suddenly the man up in the tree turned around. I saw his face and immediately recognized this man as well. It was John Doe, the man who’s grave I lay upon, only John Doe was not his name, it was Axel Sjöström. According to this vision, Axel and my great grandfather’s lives were connected by root and twine. The two worked as loggers, as ax-men, as lumberjacks, back in a small Scandinavian village named Sundsvall.

The images that now presented themselves flooded through my mind faster than I can explain, as if they were silver and liquid in substance, like nothing we are used to seeing, but the knowledge they revealed was clear, whether in metaphor or truth, I cannot say, all I know is what I saw. My great grandfather’s name was Jesper, and eventually he fell in love and married a Norwegian women named Anna, and they decided to leave Scandinavia for a life in the new America.

Axel decided to go along with them. There was no woman to keep him, and no family closer than he was with Jesper. He felt no need to remain in Sweden, he wanted to get out and explore the world, he wanted to learn a new trade, he wanted to fall in love with an American dame. So Axel packed a few things in a small leather satchel, joined Jesper and Anna, and crossed the Pacific Ocean by boat.

When they got to Ellis Island two months later, Jesper and Anna checked in. They were given new names, “better names”, American names. The authorities told them it was so that their names were easier to pronounce for the locals. They couldn’t care less the reason for the change, the two had each other and that’s all that mattered. Their names were changed from Jesper and Anna Aaronson to Jack and Jill Johnson.

But Axel didn’t want this. He didn’t see how the changing of his name was to benefit him or the people. He didn’t want to be baptized with an American title, he didn’t want to lose his name, to forget his heritage, to be forgotten. He wanted to leave his homeland and explore the world, not be diluted by it. Axel didn’t want to go by any name other than the one his Swedish father gave him, so he abandoned the ship a few miles before docking and he began to swim.

When he finally made it to shore he was exhausted, but he had survived the ocean, and so would his heritage. But what he didn’t know at the time, is that he would never see his best friend, Jesper, again after that. He was on his own.

As the years passed, Axel moved south and stayed along the East coast for the first few years. His English improved but was never fluent. He worked any odd job he could find that didn’t require a complete knowledge of the language, but since he could not prove himself a legal citizen there were not many option to choose from.

Most jobs that paid a decent wage would refuse to hire him. So he wandered up and down the coast and across most of America year after year, from town to town, exploring the terrain, making detailed notes of the wildlife, learning the names of the indigenous flora. He was so fascinated by the beauty of the landscape that he could never bring himself to leave despite his hardships.

Axel continued exploring new places, meeting new people, looking for work and taking up new hobbies but the longer he wandered the more he realized that he didn’t really belong anywhere. He wasn’t able to find himself a wife, or buy himself a stake of land, so he just continued to work the odd job. Sometimes he would work out an entire season on a farm, other times he manned a fishing boat for a few months out on the sea, but as each season came to an end he would have to start all over again.

Axel refused to receive any help from anyone along the way. His Scandinavian pride kept any handouts at bay. He insisted that he was to survive on his own terms. He was determined to carve out a life for himself, to find love, to discover enlightenment through truth. Axel was driven by a strong will to remain authentic and free. The system could take his money, his shoes, his food, but they could not have him. All he had to do was walk into the library of records and have his name changed, but he refused to be anyone else other than himself, he refused to conform. He knew who he was and where he was from, but after all this time the one thing he never knew is where he would end up.

One night decades later, back on the same coast from which he landed all those years ago, he sat on a salt weathered bench, his hair matted, his bearded face covered in dirt, he stared out over the ocean with tears in his eyes and he wondered where he went wrong. He thought to himself how he never should have left home. He wondered what his life might have been like had he never ventured out and tried to see the world. While feeling remorseful about his journey and where it had led him, he was suddenly taken back.

Across the ocean, at the edge of the Earth there appeared two giant moons hovering over the horizon. One larger than his fist if extended out in front of him, and one blue. For a moment he forgot all about his hardships and he sat there for hours, hypnotized by the majesty of the light in the sky. Slowly that light began to change. The brightness of the moons began to fade.

As the minutes passed Axel watched on as the moons began to darken. He looked around in hopes that someone else was there baring witness, that someone else would be there to experience the moment with him, but the dock was completely empty. Axel was suddenly afraid to die, thinking that the world was about to end, he found himself completely alone, thousands of miles from home and nobody was there to experience it with him. He had made it all this way and for what? Axel watched on as the moon eventually eclipsed and turned to a dark blood red.

As I lay their over his grave, I wondered if he could feel me. I wondered of his life, of his ancestry, I wondered until I couldn’t see anymore and so I opened my eyes. The moons were still there standing at the edge of a dawning sky, but barely. They had not yet eclipsed, but they had traveled a considerable amount by the time I had reopened my eyes. They had started to inch closer to the sawblade-like ridge of the Western slope that lay before me.

I sat up and I readied my camera to take a shot. I placed the viewfinder up to my eye and through the lens I watched as the moon was slowly swallowed by the skinny, desperate fingers of the winter trees situated on the ridge of the horizon. The shadow of the Earth was only about half way across the surface of the moon but the sun had already begun to rise on the Eastern side. By the time it was three quarters dark the moons would no longer be visible, having dropped below the mountains and out of view.

I held my camera, but I never let the shutter fly. This is strange for a photographer, but in that moment I felt that there was no point. There would be no eclipse for me. There would be no conclusion, no climax, no spectacular, no end. So I placed my camera back into my bag and I sat there, disappointed. Three moons in one night and I would only see two. I’ve somehow come to know life in this way.

I sat still for a moment, thinking back and sinking deep into thought. I realized how I may not have caught the climax this time, but who is to say that I didn’t catch it the last time it came around, over 150 years ago…

As I packed up my things the sun was starting to peak over the ocean’s edge. Everything around me began to get brighter and I finally saw the cemetery for what it was. A beautifully constructed garden for the dead. The two figures that I thought to be lovers by night, were just black plastic bags full of mulch by day. The truth will always be set free by the light.

I started to make my way out, but just before I did I was able to see more clearly the names of all the headstones that were scattered around me. The sun had now come out enough to illuminate everything. I was stopped dead in my tracks. Then suddenly it dawned on me, that I was not alone. Etched into the granite of every one of the headstones was either the name, John Doe, or Jane Doe.

At first I didn’t know what to make of this. To be honest it brought a great sadness over me. And then a profound joy. It was in that moment that I realized I am not alone. There are others of us out there, just like Axel and I. Those who wander, those who are lost. And even if it comes to pass that one day we are forgotten, we will all have each other in the after life. And it is there, that we will finally have a family, and it is there, that we will finally make a home.

*Photo credit goes to my lovely mother. She took this shot of the 'Super Blue Blood Moon' on the night of February 1st, 2018. I guess she wasn't up early enough to catch it as it eclipsed.