Moonshadow

Cat Stevens Moonshadow blind science remix 

 

The soft moonlight fell upon his aged face.  He smiled.  He had been in the moonshadow for too long.  The light reminded him.  His lady’s touch, in the end had finally arrived.  If only to guide him home.  He didn’t care.  For a moment, it justified him.  It validated all.  He felt the surge of strength flow through his bones so brittle.  Desperate muscles relocated their strength.  Renewed blood filled his veins pumping life to every corner.  For a fraction, he was again complete.  That was all it took.  He was ready. 

Cervantes wouldn’t tell you that.  He never really new this man from La Mancha.  This is due in part to the fact that Cervantes had a job.  He wanted to paint the man a fool.  He wanted to point out his actions as sheer folly.  In long laden sentences, he labored to present the Don as a simpleton lost in his own grand vision of himself. 

Alonso however, always knew.  He was always able to see the truth, but fought desperately to see it his way.  What would you have of him?  Would you have a cracked landscape so baked that it was colored with the blush of the setting sun, or a verdant land in need only of a hero?  Would you rather have dilapidated windmills, or leviathan dragons.  Natives made joyous at appearance of savior Quixote, or bent and broken peasants whose laughter tore at the man who reached out to make them more.  What would you have?  He saw both worlds you know.  Alonso Quixote forever walked the line.  For him it was never a delusion, it was a choice.

This was especially true when it came to Dulcinea.  Cervantes laughed.  He made much of the fact that she was only the simple Aldonza Lorenzo, a plain farm girl.  As low as the beasts she tended.  How the readers would laugh.  How they would herald Cervantes quick wit.  It turns out Cervantes was the fool. 

Quixote, ever the man of secrets however, let Cervantes think what he wanted to.  Quixote knew her.  He knew that so many found her to be only a simple farm girl.  He would play the fool, he would perpetuate the vision if only it would save Dulcinea.  For he knew that sometimes Aldonza believed this lie herself. Quixote would not allow for this to stand.  One thing Quixote could never figure out however, was is love the greatest deception of all… the greatest truth… or both?  Regardless, he loved Dulcinea not only for herself, but more importantly in spite of herself. 

She was the moon that reflected that all that was best back.  He did the same for her.  But something happened.  I don’t know what.  Cervantes certainly didn’t know.  But the face of Dulcinea’s moon turned away from Quixote.  He became lost in the moonshadow.  The void.  No reflection.  He could turn to the true dragons that lie in reality, or continue his masquerade.  As he knew both worlds he chose to forge his own reality.  He felt the bites, the ferocious stings of reality, but he maintained.  He would yell at the darkness, only to have it yell back.  All in the hopes to escape the surrounding moon shadow.             

Finally, on that night, he was able to break from the darkness.  Bathing in the respite of the sudden celestial gift, he smiled as he gave his last breath.