The Moon in an oyster

The night I wrote this, the Moon seemed just about an eighth shy of full splendor, subtly withholding its entirety. I find resonance in things that are subtle as they offer a keener path to my sensibilities, helping me see what is evident as well as the equal power of the unseen, unfolded only through the mind’s eye. Subtlety lent the Moon more power to reveal itself, leading me to see it as a sphere of pearl, a gift of layered cosmic labors, cradled within the oyster-shell flaps of the Earth and sky! But this "subtlety" that the pearly Moon or the lunar pearl carries, in light and in presence, is indeed a poignant mystery when you come to know its beginnings.

Scientific minds have come up with many possible theories on the origin of our Moon but the most plausible one yet, first suggested by physicists W.K. Hartmann and D. R. Davis, in a paper published in 1975, explained it by stating that very early during the Hadean Eon (about 4.5 to 4.6 billion years ago), when the Earth was just formed, it was struck by a huge asteroid-like body, a "planetisimal" almost three times the size of Mars. The impact produced debris that eventually formed the Moon. One fact supporting this theory has been the oxygen isotope composition in the Moon being similar to the Earth’s, unlike that in Mars or in other parts of the Solar System. This places the origin of the Moon’s forming materials to be near the Earth’s vicinity. From where I sit, looking up the Moon, I tried to imagine our very Earth’s substances in a sweeping summon, spewing out of our planet, radically coalescing to form its own satellite that would reflect the Sun’s light when darkness falls on half of its face. Simply awesome.

Back on Earth, in our seas and rivers, pearls are formed when mollusks cope with change. They are formed by some marine and freshwater bivalve mollusks such as oysters, mussels, even abalone. When a piece of mother-of-pearl (the shiny inner part of the mollusk’s shell) or a foreign matter such as a bead or a grain of sand, is inserted, either by plan or accident, into the tissues of the mollusk, the tissues start secreting a substance called nacre. These secretions are nature’s way of coping with a "new" and unfamiliar part of the system, without overthrowing its essence. These secretions, in the form of calcium carbonate and conchiolin, a binding substance, form layers around the piece of the inserted material. The result is the formation of a pearl, a surprisingly refined presence, composed of about 86 percent calcium carbonate (in the form of aragonite crystals), about 10 percent water, and about four percent conchiolin. Indeed, a pearl is but the voice of experience that has solidified and become iridescent. When experience solidifies and is polished by the layers of infinitesimal moments in the weathered shell of life, a pearl of an insight is born. Anne Morrow Lindbergh in her book, Gift from the Sea (1955), saw this perfect metaphoric confluence between a woman’s life and that of an oyster.

But a pearl’s iridescence does not only reflect years of experience. My friends and I once met a five-year-old boy named Niré in his home at the foothills of the Himalayas. His skin, gait and gaze were telling of the seasons he spent committing to working memory the steep, cold but incomparably breathtaking terrain that prepares the eyes and limbs to eventually dislodge human conceit against the Annapúrna, the highest mountain region in the world that includes the Earth’s nine highest peaks, including Mt. Everest. I remember him waking us up very early, and while gesturing with a painting motion of his hands the sight before us as we stood at an edge, kept uttering, "Usa." Frustrated at our inability to understand him, Niré ran to his father who explained it to us. He said Niré was pointing to all the things before us that made him say, from the bottom of his heart, "Good morning!" Included in the scene were very thin clouds with a luster different from those I had seen before. It turned out that those clouds were actually called mother-of-pearl clouds seen only in high latitudes. Niré and all his five years sat there at a cliff’s edge, with his arms hugging his tiny legs, seeing and enjoying his perfect morning that took 4.5 billion years for him to see! A pearl is the voice of experience solidifying, shining. Between the oyster shell of the sky and the Himalayas, there sat Niré, the subtle, iridescent pearl of an exceptional experience of a mountain morning.