wolf moon
it's the first full moon of the year today, called the wolf moon. it looked round and yellow and very close to the earth; watched it come along and hide behind buildings before coming up again, i thought of the elliott smith lyric that goes, "the moon is a lightbulb breaking / it'll go around with anyone / but it won't come down for anyone." when we came back home the trees looked like black teeth, and the sky was red at the horizon and the tops pale blue.
He sleeps in an antlered bed of dull black wrought iron until the moon, the governess of transformations and overseer of somnambulists, pokes an imperative finger through the narrow window and strikes his face: then his eyes start open.
[...]
Poor, wounded thing ... locked half and half between such strange states, an aborted transformation, an incomplete mystery, now we he lies writhing on his black bed in the room like a Mycenaean tomb, howls like a wolf with his foot in a trap or a woman in labour, and bleeds."Wolf-Alice," The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories, Angela Carter
when i was younger i remember being obsessed with the beast of gevaudan* after reading about it in some book about ufos, storms that dropped fish on medieval villages, etc. it was some kind of animal (unknown specifically whether it was anything from a hyena, a sickly lion, a large dog, a wolf - the part that's relevant to this post - or what-have-you) that attacked several people until it was killed, unusual for its aggression and the breadth of it. probably over time it was embellished and exaggerated as these things are, and it took on different traits of different animals due to that course. but still it's something interesting to think about, i feel like any kind of event with the moon makes you think of change and transformation.
illustration for the tale of prince ivan, the firebird, and the grey wolf (1899), ivan bilibin
* the lack of an accent is because the font i chose for this blog is limited, and i think it's too cute otherwise to change it.
13 january 2024