Impact Craters

I think about the moon quite a bit, it's our constant sentinel of ever-changing moods but only one face, which is an honesty that is rarely found.  What are the most profound and beautiful to me are the craters that fill the surface of the moon, because the craters are an unflinching testament to the harshness of life.  Our moon stoically takes each hit, large and small, without complaint as her visage is shaped and re-shaped according to the flotsam of space.

The moon doesn't try to hide her wounds, that's a vanity for lesser creatures; instead they are all displayed with naked vulnerability to those who are unafraid to look.  And we who look are inspired to know that it is our impact craters that make us beautiful, not an unblemished surface at all.  Time and space are relentlessly re-shaping our visages and I bear my scars proudly like the moon taught me, because they are the story of my survival.

This is all on my mind today because of the large response to my two previous posts about Charles Howard. First I'd like to say that I am both humbled and gratified by all the people who read my story and shared it with others, so a big thank you all.  The second thing I'm wrestling with is the true depth of CH's crater on my soul because, as I previously wrote, the experience of having my faith rewarded changed me in unexpected ways.

I would love to say that I'm at peace with the whole situation, and I am for the most part, but I still wonder very often just where Cheech was for two years.  I worry that he charmed some other family into loving him and now they are left wondering about his fate like I was, and I don't wish that on anyone.  But mostly I wonder about the why of it all;  why did he leave?  Why did he come back?

The answers will most likely never be revealed, but my questioning of it all isn't likely to stop.  I think it is that obsessive questioning that drives my entire series of books and it is almost laughably ironic that Prospector isn't the sort of the person that wonders about the why of things.  He moves almost completely on instinct and trusts his inner voice implicitly without once ever asking that little voice how it knows.  That was not a conscious decision on my part, I've written already about the experience of characters creating themselves and that is just who Prospector is.

It's also been mentioned before that I was unaware of Prospector's affection for cats in general, and it is a love affair that has carried through the rest of the series.  The cats are an integral part of my story, now that I look back at the three and a half books that are written, the series is not about cats at all, but they are always there.

So, is my crater cat-shaped or something else?  I do not know, but those are two more question for me to ask.