The Moon

I was cleaning up my computer files tonight because apparently my body thinks I do not require a decent amount of sleep anymore. What I found was a bunch of old writings that I had forgotten about. One in particular is an essay that I wrote at the end of this last semester of school. What is funny is that I asked my friend, who usually reads anything I write before I turn it in for a grade, about posting she did not remember this one. She encouraged me to post it because “you never know who you might help.”

Below you will find the poem the essay is about and then the essay …maybe its for you…maybe its for me…either way here goes:


Driving Home After Marriage Counseling
I noticed the moon, one of those eccentric ones,
fat yellow, superfluous in the just dark sky,
the kinds they call “harvest” or “lover’s”,
the kind no one would want to walk on

You must have been negotiating carefully
the curves on the long farm road
that took us home, I don’t remember.
What I remember is the quiet ride
and the words
the thing you’d told him:
She wants the moon!
And how what I saw it
from behind the car window,
and felt its honeyed stare, I thought: yes.
-Ginger Jones



Response Essay to: “Driving Home After Marriage Counseling”

When choosing this poem for my response essay it comes with obvious conflict. One, I have never been married and two, the poet is my professor. At the risk of looking like a big brown nosing student, let me clarify why I chose this poem. The reason is simply that I want the moon. When Dr. Jones read this poem in class I felt that stirring in my being, the kind one gets when the emotional volcano is about to erupt. The confusion that these are ultimately not words from my own being however I felt as if they were stolen from my secret journal.

Sure, I have never been married which would lead to the correct assumption that I have never been “Driving Home After Marriage Counseling”. However, have I had the long seemingly awkward rides with my a partner after arguments? Yes. Have I been told that I am impossible and crazy? Yes. Has he yelled that I have no idea of reality and I want what is out of reach? Yes. I have been torn down and ripped to pieces by words because of my goals and wants out of this life. Honestly, I do not think my goals and dreams for life are that far out of reach, I just think they do not fit into his life plan. I will never be an oppressed “Stepford wife”. That is the reality plain and simple; I have goals and ambitions and I will achieve them.

The moon is not out of reach for me. Maybe I am too Pollyanna in my believing that I can “have my cake and eat it too”. However, hardly do I think that my plans of having a successful career along with a family of my own one day are unattainable. That is my moon. My moon is just as the poet describes “the kind no one would want to walk on.” Truth be told, I have been trampled on and I will not stand for it anymore. I want the moon. I do not want this life of just “filling a void” some space that is open in this already established life. What about my life? What about our life? I have given and sacrificed and I simply can not give anymore.

This poem or modern sonnet is simple in nature yet perfectly describes the complicated inner war of an ambitious woman. I want so badly to go on this feminist rampage here but in that I will lose the beauty of this poem. The beauty of the affair between a woman and her goals letting nothing get in her way. Fighting for her chance in society, this woman in the poem is relatable to most women in society with the difference being if the moon is worth the risk.

I laugh to myself while reading the words that pop up on the computer screen as my fingers dance across this keyboard. I sound like I should run out and burn my bra in a resurgence of the feminist movement. Maybe this is not even a good essay, maybe this is more of a journal entry that I am turning in on the last day of class. Either way, I know that I am at a crossroads but hear me when I say I will get my moon. It may not be tomorrow or even next year and it may not be the easiest road to travel, but I will get my moon.


I did make an A on this essay and I am well on my way to getting my moon!
Until next time dearies!



Comments

TracyBlalock said…
Yes---YOU will get your moon!!!! Hang in there,sweetie!!!

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