How funny it is that we have let the presence of the moon affect us in such a way. What we hold as a static part of human life, flipside to our eternal sun, is but merely a random result from the myriads of interactions that plague the endless universe. The "Moon's" very shape, its size and colour, all this information we have ingrained in our minds as something fixed, something that describes all lunar bodies that encircle planets yet we fail to realise that our tiny green and blue orb does not hold any monopoly. Many planets are orbited by many more moons than our little home does but if you were to utter the word "Moon" to anyone, the immediate reaction of their cerebral synapses would be to link said word with only a single moon, our Moon. How awfully human of us to do so, how utterly guaint to inscribe entire cultures with the mark of a celestial body that little more diverse than the myriads of other moons in the universe or even our solar system. Many gods have risen and fallen over the years who claimed dominion over the night where they, an anthropomorphic expression of the Moon, reigned supreme above all for half the life of the world. Castaway mages that believed they could wield the forces of the Night mother, all to be proved as nothing more than charlatans incapable of stopping themselves from worshiping a dead rock floating in rhythm with our mother planet. And even smaller points of life, like flowers named "moon lilies" and the romanticised nature that we attribute to the pale twilight glow of the grey moon. All these, very human ways to grasp the world and give little meaning to aimless interactions between spheres of pure material nature, violently crashing into each other with no sign of emotion but the sheer weight of their spatial mass, constantly splintering from each other and themselves and creating ever bigger or smaller bodies of material planes. This result of maddening fights between giants is the result of the Moon, a hollow, inconsequential aftermath of the war of the planters, now a simple satellite floating around its master, the evenly empty of meaning planet that we call our home.
But maybe these results weren't necessarily the least impressive ones among the endless stars. Although Earth may hold the least amount of moons, and although its daughter-in-orbit may not be the shiniest of them all in colour or shape, there still remains a certain amount of worth to be attributed to its existence. Not by the emotional arts of poetry, song or dance that humans usually revert to, but the first of the natural languages to express beauty, science. For what is a satellite moon without its scientific explanation but a cacodaemoniacal entity, bent on haunting the night skies with its grizzly shades. So through the light of science we can finally expel our superstitions and look beyond the thin veil we enveloped ourselves with up to a less malevolent being that is far greatly lacking in the needed intelligence to appreciate the ideas of "haunting" or "cursing" tinier existences. If one daring poet wanted to make a final attempt to reconcile with the Moon, he may as well liken the grey mass to a gentle giant, too ignorant to cause any harm and far too powerful to need to resort to solutions such as violence.
It's singularity inside the Earth's sphere of influence isn't the only thing that we could acknowledge to the Moon, for as much as this text has revelled in using the colour "gray" to describe the Moon, it's not necessarily right. Well, of course it is "factual" the inherent nature of its surface betrays that for all of time, as long as the human retina remains the same, we can only gaze at the moon and enjoy a passably interesting grey colour. But who is to say that we can ever trust our own eyes in these matters? All of us have become victims to the cruel tricks our eyesight has played on us, ever since our childhood. Wildest fantasies insert themselves as normal or natural in the simple yet roaring engine that is the creative mind of a young child. Many times I have gazed up at the sky to remind myself of a familiar sight, only to have my hopes crushed by the sheer weight of a foreign colour, something that I can't recollect at any other time. The blank empty of its previous gray was then replaced by what felt like an uncountable amount of life and colour. One for every occasion.
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Of course, maybe the Saturn moon of Titan can bask in its grand, yellow colour that resembles the colours of the father Sun, but the Moon never let herself seem inferior for she would dress her beautiful moonlight with every single toxic pollutant that she could get her hands on and she would infuse her image with a strong yellow tint.
But what is even a planet's image to the resilience of the Moon? Is she not able to cloak herself to rival even the grander-than-her planet of Mars, a dried up hunk of space dust that decided it deserves to adorn itself with the most aggressive colour of all? Nonsense, she would put down those foolish ambitions and bathe herself in the natural hue of blood and war, her deep bloody red, her thick crimson red, the red of the god of war Mars himself. The blood moon would rise and rise, higher than all your ridiculous human apparitions and crumble any hopes you had that this giant held any detail of pity towards your pathetic existence.
She may have been sculpted a boring gray, but She had nothing to envy from the rest of the mindless sheep that circle every other planet, Her moon brotherine held no candle to how beautifully Her form can weave its colour palette. Like a maiden still filled with love for Her lover, She would change Her dress to suit the occasion, making Herself the most beautiful in the night sky, so beautiful that when the life-granting light of the sun came along, you'd wish you would die just to see Her form once more.
Finally, the greatest gift of all that She could grant you wouldn't be one of physical beauty, but that of physical well-being. In a duo along with the mother-planet Earth, both these are extremely miniscule compared to most celestial bodies that inhabit both our system and the whole universe. Yet they share a special kind of relationship between the two of them, since the perfect planet-to-moon ratio has been achieved in our own little nook of space. If it weren't for the presence of our Moon, the planet's orbital axis would be an ever-shifting figure, it's axial tilt a forever changing degree which holds the power to deliver immeasurable punishment upon the planet's surface and alter its natural phenomena. Basically, without the influence of the Moon's, human life would be little more than an insurmountable struggle against the very forces of nature and space itself. Although I don't quite dare to call this contribution of the Moon purely altruistic. You see, just like how every mother has to have her umbilical cord cut off from her own child, so does this strange maternal relationship between mother-planet and satellite exist. With a violent and abrupt eruption, maybe just a little more violent than that of childbirth, a planetoid sized boulder found itself crushing upon the surface of a young Earth, once pure and naive. Now her scattered viscera of splintered earth filled the atmosphere around her core, dancing restlessly in empty space according to the careful etiquette of dancing set straight by the laws of gravity. Her primordial flesh refused to leave the comfort of its progenitor and in the same manner the very weight of the Earth seemed poised to hold its lost pieces close to her, a forever remembrance of what used to be her former glory. A prideful, strong planet for its size, the deep feelings of connection seemed to remain triumphant against the test of time, not only making for a prime example of survival but also a perfect representation of nature's power of rebirth. This was apparent when the broken pieces that remained congregated in a proud pile of dust and stone, slowly making up the surface that would in the future be called the systems most resilient moon, eventually smoothing it's surface to a seemingly perfect circle. So when the gravity of the Moon enables us to curse and yell and fall in love with our long lost sister, She is doing it out of commitment, a response that is barely powerful enough to make it up. This special bond would not be replicated at least in the near system of neighboring planets, for these gas giants and other ridiculously sized chunks of rock could only capture their children, ripping them out of the cold embrace of space where they pointlessly floated along and dragging them in with their titanic gravity waves. For they had many children that orbited them, but none that could claim they were born from the stony flesh as their parent planet.
Misunderstood, accursed, worshiped and studied, the Moon has remained resilient to every single one of humanity's childish tantrums, but all patience has its breaking point. Will She endure your latest curse upon Her?