How Hard Can It Be?

Dear Cory:

Has Cory ever been followed by a Moon Shadow?

American Breeder Boy

Dear ABB:

Cory lives in a rainforest. On those rare nights when mist and cloud evanesce and the moon is risen, yes, he has been followed by a moon shadow. He prefers it, though, when the moon is behind and his shadow dances in front so he can keep an eye on it. Cory is nothing if not watchful -- some say hypervigilant. After the many tabs of LSD he used to ingest, things like shadows still tend to fibrillate, melt and transform. If he may be permitted to wax personal rather than the usual self-referential (there is a difference), Cory would like to recall long, stoned walks in June when the shortest nights were filled with electricity and nature’s glistening fecundity.

You capitalize Moon Shadow, which leads to a suspicion that your question has some hidden meaning. Surely you do not lie awake of a night, your milky thighs sprawled atop the coverlet, wondering about Cory’s corporeality expressed in shadow, though that be a worthy pastime. Are you remembering the Cat Stevens song “Moonshadow” of 1970? Are you interested in the journey that led Cat to embrace Islam, take the name Yusuf Islam and work for peace and charity? If you are, you may, in his friend Dolly Parton’s words, think him “a precious man”, and with Dolly, recoil from Yusuf’s having been on Homeland Security’s watch list due to a “spelling error” and, for a time, excluded from the United States wherein you dwell. On the other hand, you might side with Salman Rushdie who took exception to Islam/Stevens saying on the ridiculous British television show Hypotheticals in 1989 that he wouldn’t mind if he saw Rushdie burned to death for his alleged blasphemy in The Satanic Verses. This might suggest Islam/Stevens was sometimes less a man of peace and more a fundamentalist approving the Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwahs. More recently, Islam/Stevens is evolving into Stevens/Islam with a new popular album and explanations of his former fundamentalist statements (claiming for example, that his remarks about Rushdie were typical British “humour”). Say what you like, Jews and Christians are usually more forgiving of our society's near-constant blasphemy despite the Bible’s recommending that blasphemers be stoned to death (Leviticus 24:16). Cory doesn’t want to be that stoned.

Or are you more literal in your question, perhaps thinking Cory is one of the moon mission astronauts of that same hallucinogenic period? He is not, being far, far too young. But what a rush it would have been: clad in a rubbery suit, in low gravity, “leapin’ and hoppin’”, as Cat wrote, with a moonshadow on our satellite’s silvery dust and the earth hanging in the black sky. The astronauts’ first steps – and shadows -- on the moon took place on Cat Stevens’ twenty-first birthday.

Your mysterious question evokes in Cory blissful recollections. He thanks you for it!