THE SACRED DANCE OF NATURE

and

various ways of telling the same story

Watercolors by Edgar Honetschlager      Text by Rosanna Albertini

The moon wakes up in the night. Sometimes she pretends she is a gondola, a light sickle that rocks in the sky; or she pretends to be happy when the clouds make her round face wet, and her look is so bright that millions of bulbs would not be able to make the same.

To tell the truth, the moon is as dry as a block of wood, as a stone dried up in the sun.  But deep in her memory ― and she does not know from when — she keeps something, she does not know what, a vague dream of grass, leaves, and most of all of white flowers.

Let’s pretend ― this is the flower of stories — that all the white flowers on earth were born from the moon. The white iris in particular. Maybe they have eyes that the stars forgot. Once the petals are open, they look up at the sky, and the white of the iris becomes a nocturnal flesh, as if flowers had sucked light from stars.

In the summer, magically, the moonflowers open up all at the same time of the same day. Maybe the moon sent stardust to the earth to wake them up? They do not live more than one day and one night. They dry quickly, maybe the moon wanted it so.

This is the sacred dance of nature, in front of which we are only gaping. Let’s make a cake.