I dreamt about the moon last week.  A luminous copper disc, perfectly full on a hot summer’s night.  A thin black line appeared at its pole and a fissure snaked across its surface.  This is real, someone told me.  This is really happening.  One half of the moon fell from the sky and careened toward us, growing ever larger as it approached the horizon.  It was enormous and golden.

Instead of cataclysmic impact, however, the half-moon plunged past and safely into orbit on the opposite side of the world.  Tectonic plates groaned and slid.  The sparkling lights of cityscapes in nocturne pulsed brighter.  Continents clove and trembled.  And we were all safe.  This was no doomsday.  This was our new reality, and this was meant to be.

I guess seasonal change must be on my mind.  We’ve swept past summer and breezed into fall in a slew of sunny days.  Yesterday I took the East River Ferry from Williamsburg to Dumbo and basked in the contentment of a beautiful afternoon.  The air was balmy, the light crisp; if only such balance could last.

A few days ago, I left late from my office in Morningside Heights just as a deepening blue covered the sky.  The moon was a fingernail sliver, a sharp crescent of white.  A spherical contour gently illumined, it seemed stolid and reassuring, in serene suspension.  It’s been a good broil of a summer, I thought, but now it’s time to shift into something new.

I was reminded of a song by the late Taiwanese chanteuse Teresa Teng.  Beloved in the Chinese-speaking world, the song title translates awkwardly into English as “The Moon Represents My Heart” (月亮代表我的心).  It seems almost counterintuitive to link one’s feelings of love to this celestial body that waxes and wanes, in a constant state of change.  But then I realized that might be entirely appropriate.  Despite superficial fluctuations, the moon is a fixed entity, immutable and dependable.  Maybe that’s what she meant.

Also, I guess Melancholia wriggled into my subconscious more than I expected.