Day 304: In His Moon Boots

In His Moon Boots
by
Matt Zurbo

 

Everybody talks about the Man In the Moon, but nobody imagines being him!
(End of crescent moon has skinny person with crescent moon for a head, lounging chest-down in it, arm dangling lazily over the side.)

I think he’s just a kid. A kid who has to stay a kid forever.
(Small puff of moon dust as Man In Moon kicks a rock as if it was a ball.)

Someone has to look after the pace that pulls our tides and helps us spin and gives us night light and romance, and kids have the best imagination.
(Man In Moon flopped, upside-down, in lifeguard’s chair on moon, arms dangling with boredom.)

I’m sure there’d be fun things to do…
(Man In Moon riding in weird, three-stilted-wheeled buggy/rocket, across desolate surface, small puff of moon dust behind him – not going fast.)

I think the moon dragons would be fun…
(Rowing through creator’s moon dust, playing with silver moon dragon.)

So would characters from nursery rhymes.
(Man In Moon is using a creator edge to get air time on his skateboard, while cow watches and cat and the fiddle, with skateboard of their own, watch and cheer.)

I suspect he’d get jealous of the star signs.
(Looking up at some of the star signs, Aries, Taurus, Leo, Gemini, Cancer, enormous, ghost-like, in the stars.)
Yet still love watching them fro the moon’s dark side.

But, overall, he’d be lonely.
(Sitting alone on roof of his silver tin hut, music beside him, arms dangling in boredom, a telescope beside him.)
And watch us too much.

I bet he was nervous when we first landed on the moon.
(Hiding behind rock, peeking to watch first lunar landing.)

All that science and stuff.
(Standing behind astronaut, who is in spacesuit.)

He would have wanted to hangout with the astronauts…
(Playing with astronauts, as if they all were little kids.)

But he would have seen all the mistakes we make on Earth.
(Close-up of Man In Moon looking into telescope. In the reflection in the telescope’s end, we can see a factory billowing smoke, and tree stumps.)

And might worry about what we would do to the moon.
(Moon with a crush of houses, with rockets tethered to each one, and mining equipment working, with conveyer belts taking rocks up to barge spaceships, and pollution and a crush of people in spacesuits. Man In Moon looking down from creator peek at it all.)  

Don’t get me wrong. The man in the moon still loves people.
(Close up of Man In Moon holding magnifying glass in front of face, creating a full moon image of it.)

But it’s his job to look down on us.
(Full moon looking over ocean with boat in it.)

Be our wonder.
(Kid and wombat looking up t moon, while standing in trees laced with streaks of moonlight.)

Our mystery.
(Kid and woman in dress dancing by fire under moonlight. Vampire in the shadows.)

You can still visit him, but not with rocket.
(Kid and big fish in apple crate boat, rowing up, into stars.)

To get there, you must travel in imagination.
(Another kid, looking up, as they walk up a spiral staircase into the sky.)

For which there are, oh, so many ways…!
(Kid being carried by four or five owls.)

If you did that, I suspect the man in the moon with be your friend forever… 
(Kid sitting on back of dragon’s neck, playing with Man In Moon, both smiling.)

 

 

The End

(From back, we see kid and Man In Moon leaning into each other, watching the Earth in the distance.)