Deference to the Moon (Sunset, Wednesday, 22 September 2010)

William Van Doren, DEFERENCE TO THE MOON (Sunset from Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va.) Oil on watercolor block, 13 x 19.

The sun left quietly, with the full moon rising opposite for the Autumn Moon Festival.

Sunset, Monday, 26 July 2010

William Van Doren. Sunset from Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on watercolor block, 13 x 19.

Sun setting opposite a rising full moon. The moon returns a favor, reflecting radiance to the sunset.

Sunset, Tuesday, 30 March 2010

William Theodore Van Doren. Sunset from Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on watercolor block, 16 x 20.

Written by Roosevelt Jamison, recorded by O.V. Wright, covered by Otis Redding:

If I was the sun way up there
I’d go with love most everywhere
I’ll be the moon when the sun goes down
Just to let you know that I’m still around

That’s how strong my love is
That’s how strong my love is

Sunset, Monday, 29 March 2010

William Theodore Van Doren. Sunset from Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on watercolor block, 16 x 20.

Not long after sunset, a nearly full moon was rising opposite, white-gold and completely clear of clouds. Then within another few minutes it was raining again.

Sunset, Monday, 7 December 2009

William Theodore Van Doren. Sunset from Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on watercolor block, 16 x 20.

The blurred moon rising last night in haze and cloud could be the same gray light inside the woods today, and for that matter almost one and the same with the streaks of cloud and dim sunlight above yesterday’s sunset. The torn-up black track of the jeep trail in the woods was left by deer hunters but reminds me of my late friend Uncle Tony’s tales of escaping, as an Austro-Hungarian officer in World War I, from a prison camp, then making his way across eastern Russia to his home in Hungary – staying for a time with Russian peasant villagers and working alongside them looking for truffles and mushrooms in the rich soil of the vast woods.

(More about the amazing Uncle Tony – as he was known – soon. Anton Lipthay was his name – direct descendant, I believe, of the celebrated general of the same name from the Napoleonic Wars, although I didn’t know enough to inquire about this while he and his relatives here were still living.)

Rising moon, setting sun, diffusing daylight. Trucks, hunters, truffles, mushrooms, escaped aristocrats. The sound of clumps of wet icy snow falling all at once from pine branches off in the middle of the woods comes across as possibly also belonging to the Mercedes station wagon, a hunter’s, I had seen earlier in the field, if it’s leaving on the muddy power line trail, but I can’t tell. Different sounds and lights and times merge, converging on whatever comes next.

Sunset, Saturday, 3 October 2009

William Theodore Van Doren. Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

Although the rising of the full moon here would appear to be tomorrow night – our moonrise tomorrow will coincide with sunset – for many Asian people living all over the world tonight is the most important night of the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival. The Moon Festival is a major holiday for the Chinese, and is also observed, wth variations, by people from Japan, Korea and Vietnam.

We spent part of the afternoon putting together battery-operated paper lanterns to give tonight to friends who own a Chinese restaurant; they gave us beautiful lotus-flavored ‘mooncakes’. I often paint the Mid-Autumn moonrise for them, although possibly they’re sick of them by now!

I was thinking it’s a little sad that in Western culture, although we have major holidays keyed to a phase of the moon, such as Easter and Passover, I couldn’t come up with any holidays that are in any way about the sun or the moon. I guess those went the way of the pagans. We do have one holiday of sorts on behalf of a heavenly body, and that would be Earth Day.

Tonight I found a possible connection between the ancient, 3,000-year-old Chinese Moon Festival and our modern Earth Day. Among the many stories associated with the Moon Festival is a myth that always begins with the premise that the earth once had ten suns. Each day a different one of the ten suns would light the earth. (I love this idea, of course; you could tell me there were a million different suns and I would believe you.) But one day all ten suns showed up at once, and so threatened to burn up the world.

The hero of the myth is an archer who shot down nine of the suns. That’s where Earth Day comes in, and climate change. Perhaps one day our heroes will be the archers who shoot down our nine too many suns.