In This Gentle Light, Be Reminded of the People You Miss
In the third grade, my class made moon journals with black laminated construction paper and white yarn. The first night, I stood on the top of our steep, asphalt driveway. In my mind, it must have been closer to the sky. Around me, a circle of dried leaves swirled in a circle, and I drew a silver crescent moon and yellow stars with twistable crayons. My first entry: There was a strong wind today, and I felt it move the moon. Proud of my first entry, I showed it to my teacher the next day. She pinched her lips together, eyes shifting from my picture to description.
“You used your feelings. That’s good. Maybe next time tell me if it’s waxing or waning.” In class, we had learned that a waxing moon gets larger and that a waning moon gets smaller. After our first entries, she taught us how to test what the moon was doing: create a C with your right hand. If the curve of the moon fits the shape of your right hand, the moon is waxing. Because I was a bit shaky on my lefts and rights, I used a mole on my left index finger to tell which way was left. Let’s imagine that the moon in our hands is filled with the pearly insides of shells. Consider yourself its caretaker, and you will understand how I felt on that hill. We will do this little thing with our own power, not relying on anyone else.
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Before bed, my mother used to tuck the covers under the outline of my body and tell me stories of acorns travelling down mountains to reach me. I look back and can’t help but wonder now if maybe she was giving me a bit of her migration. She came to America on a plane, but what she described in those night stories was the lightning, the leaves, the setbacks, all that water. Everywhere I am drawn to water.
Wander through this art gallery with me. It’s across from the sea. Start with the left and you’ll see red flowers floating in shadow, edged in yellow. The artist says she carved each petal with a knife so they would bloom like echoes. Look at the painting next to it: an excess of water in the base. Maidens come down like rain to bathe in rock pools, and men steal their robes to keep them landlocked from home. These are the kinds of stories that I never learned from my mother, the kind that make you wary of dependence: lovers allowed to meet each other only once a year during clear skies, an American helicopter window falling onto a Japanese elementary school athletic field.
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Mitski’s song “Francis Forever” from her album Bury Me At Makeout Creek starts with the lines:
I don’t know what to do without you / I don’t know where to put my hands / I’ve been trying to lay my head down
The song’s dynamics are suggestive of a confession, Mitski’s voice getting progressively louder until crying out that she’s writing this [song] at 3AM. She can’t sleep, filled with the energy of missing someone. Her lyrics openly admit her loneliness and dependence on the person who is absent from her. Alone in bed, she can't remember how to lay her body to get to sleep. In the next verse, she builds up to:
I don’t think I can stand to be / where you don’t see me
This sentiment is something that I would be scared to admit to myself. I have always tried to embody independence and self-reliance—I want to be free to propel myself to wherever I want, and I've believed for a long time that needing to be seen by someone minimizes my ability to move. If I love someone, will I need to remain within their field of vision to feel complete?
After the first two verses, Mitski returns with:
On sunny days, I go out walking / I end up on a tree-lined street / I look up at the gaps of sunlight / I miss you more than anything
The quiet of her voice makes me feel as if so much time has gone by that it’s almost a shock how she suddenly remembers her lover. All the same, I think it’s telling that she walks absentmindedly to a place that lets—or perhaps forces her to—remember. I want to know what makes someone think of a person they miss. The warmth of sun touching hair and skin, the intimacy of light sliding through leaves, a specific brand of tea, a sense of restraint, a language, covers tucked around the outline of a body in bed, red crane earrings whose wings move up and down when bent. This is the landscape of memory and moon-stuff, loneliness waxing and waning, pebbles skimming the surface for seconds before drowning.