Abandoned Houses

I was doing more sorting in the house today and came across a collection of writing essays/exercises that I did with a writing friend way back in 2003. Not all of them are worth sharing, but maybe a few of them are. Here’s one that I still like. Hope you enjoy!

The writing prompt was: abandoned houses

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Abandoned! The house on the moon where the Old Man lived. Where has he gone? Off into the stardust. Why did he go? No one believed anymore.

In the far away past, before the hollow age of Science, those with illuminated hearts saw the Old Man’s world in all its magical beauty. His soaring mountains, his plunging valleys, his wide, wide plains. And the seas. His wonderful, disparate seas! Frigid seas. Foaming seas. Serene and Tranquil seas. Seas of Showers. Clever Seas. Storm, Wave-beaten seas. Seas that teemed with Serpents. Misty, Cloudy seas. Seas that hovered on the Edge of forever.

But then Science sent probes, followed by human footsteps, and men returned to the earth and pronounced with their limited, human vision: “There are no seas. Only cold, hard rock and dust.”

That’s all they said the moon really was.

The Old Man stayed long. He tried to whisper the truth. He tried to sing it for the world to hear.

“I am here. I am real. I watch over you in the night, chasing away your nightmares when I send a beam of my light through your window shades in the still, dark hours. I sing you sweet lullabies to hush you softly, sweetly into sleep.”

But then they stopped believing. “There is no Man in the Moon,” the said, “only rock and dust, cold, cold nothingness.

Until it broke the Old Man’s heart. And he faded away in the stardust.

(c. Joyce DiPastena, May 19, 2003. See Lunar Seas and Oceans for names of the lunar seas quoted above.)