the moon, la lune

It must be a full moon, or near to it - the outdoors is so, so bright with it. My house is tucked away from the world, and unless I have all my lights switched on, the area around my house is pitchy-dark; there's no man-made light nearby. But tonight - and the last few nights - when I look out my windows from a darkened room, it is bright with a bluish light. There is still snow on the ground, and the whiteness of the snow reflects and doubles the whiteness of the moonlight. It looks like the lightening of the world you get right before sunrise, when everything is still in the greys and violets and blues of night, but lightened, illuminated - it's a shadowy world, not a world of deep darkness.

The moon is so white and blindingly bright. Nights like this make me feel like something is going to happen (though it rarely does), something good and wonderful and profound.

It's unfortunate that it's so bitterly cold here right now - my desktop weather widget tells me it is 15 degrees, and feels like 6.  I would like - I would like very much - to sit outside in the moonlight. On the porch maybe, which should be in the path of the moon's light. If it was just a bit warmer, I'd do it - bundle up with hat and hood and mittens, a blanket for my legs maybe - just sit quietly in the moonlight. If I could get entirely away from the man-made world it would be even better - I can hear the rush of the interstate from my house, a rush which most of the time is a fairly pleasant white noise, almost as good as the rush of a swiftly moving creek.

I've been thinking about French a lot lately - reading Proust is obviously exacerbating this - and though I feel a bit odd about the gendering of all nouns in that language, I have to admit there is something wholly appropriate, even pleasing, about the feminine moon, la lune.