Rabbit Moon Monologue

RABBIT MOON


Here it is, Easter Monday AND April Fool’s Day all rolled into one and I’m being polled by AOL on how I eat my chocolate bunny–ears or feet first? It’s a holiday, a post-Easter recovery period to withdraw from all that sugar. Funny how the politicos turned it into César Chavez Day. So what kind of joke is that? Grape sugar retro-patriotism? Revisionist history. I got an email from a friend and it said it’s a holiday in Ireland too. To commemorate Eamonn de Valera’s election as the first president. The first Dial was created. And Home Rule.

My granny always got sentimental at Easter dinner. All that patriotism better fodder than the cabbage and bones of the slaughterfield. The Lazarus metaphor runs deep. She’d drag out photos of the martyrs out so I associated Easter with uprisings. It seems Ireland took to the idea of resurrection—literally and politically—like a goose to water. Some are still waiting for The Big Fellah to arise.

I got a cousin named after Michael Collins, you know. Our family’s steeped in it. Blood of the IRA, IRB.... and the IRS if I don’t get to my taxes soon. Procrastination runs in the family too. But I hate being late. Except for taxes. I hate the ides of April—because of the IRS. It says here that Brian Boru defeated the Vikings in Clontarf on Good Friday in 1014. Do you think the monks were fixing the dates? But how were they to know the Normans were on their way? The taxation vexation. The Romans never got to Ireland, though they thought about it. Having plundered Britain, all that ripe wheat tithing them on.

Do you think that’s what T.S. Eliot had in mind when he said April was the cruelest month—the IRS? He was an American, you know. Married a British heiress and then he took on airs. He had her committed too. I think she embarrassed him. Made a fool of herself in public because of a bad case of chronic PMS. I can relate to that. April is the month where everything catches up with you. Everything you put off comes home to roost. And then the slaughter of time begins.

It took the Irish 800 years to gain freedom from the Normans because they kept betraying each other. How the Normans got to Ireland in the first place is a real Judas story. They didn’t need a conquering Caesar. They had a traitor right in their midst. One fine Lent, a petty king, Desmond was lusting after other kings’ wives instead of 30 pieces of silver. So he handed Ireland over to the English—only they didn’t leave. Condemned Ireland became a regular Potter’s Field, a Field of Blood. Did Desmond beg forgiveness saying, “I have betrayed a country?” Did he hang himself beneath an etherized sky? T.S. Eliot was thinking about the Great War. I didn’t know what was so great about it. A lack of coffee and decent bread. But in Italy the trains ran on time even if there was nowhere to go.

Passover begins tomorrow. A moveable feast. But the moon is waning. Just as well, people get crazy during the full moon. According to the Farmer’s Almanac, this moon was called the Pink Moon. Does that mean it’s a communist moon, or a girl moon? Do we only get a boy moon once a year when the moon goes male? Is that what causes war? The Blue Moon? Moon, moonth, month. Luna, lunatic.

Funny, Ireland,, India and Israel gained their freedom after the war. What’s with all these eyes? I hate it when countries measure the resurrection of hope from cease fire to cease fire, year after year. One Easter, I was in Taos, the hotel owner gave me this letter to read—it was from Einstein expressing his profound regret. he yearned for a kinder, gentler time—he wanted to set the clocks back. 

No, I never had children, it wasn’t a hard decision made after the birth of the Age of Light. The idea of time being measured by atomic clocks had a lot to do with it. Too bright to see. We split the atom and there was all this extra light left over. We couldn’t put it back in Pandora’s box.

Speaking of package deals, this year we had the equinox, Easter and Passover right on top of each other. And April Fool’s Day punctuated by a comet. I was in lovely shape with the curse going full tilt. Peri-meno-what? Biological clocks aside, it got me to thinking about how we measure time. 

But the measurement of time wasn’t precise 300 years ago, let alone 2000 years ago. It says on the internet that “The discrepancy between the years is inescapable.” At this point, my datebook’s so jammed, I could use another Easter vacation. How to squeeze in the extra days without becoming a petty Caesar is the question. Stop the clocks, I want to get off.

April is the cruelest month. But what does that mean? Chaucer said, “When that Aprille with his shoores soothe, and March has pierced to the root...” was the time to go on pilgrimages. And March is Mars: the god of war. Did you know there was an official war season during Caesar’s time? After the crops were planted it was like a pilgrimage to go out and slaughter your enemy during the summer. “Hi-ho, hi-ho, it’s off to war we go...”. But the rules ware: you had to be back in time for the harvest. Ever wonder why September is the seventh month? Or December is the 10th month? You probably never thought of it at all.

Things work on me like that. I’ll be minding my own business and a word will suddenly pop into my head; it ceases to be its ordinary self and reveals its skeleton. Then I have to look it up to see if I’m right. I never get anything done, it becomes a wild goose chase. And now that there’s the internet, it’s even worse. 

Apparently the old Roman calendar, which was based on the Egyptian one, only had 10 months. I guess they weren’t counting moons. Did you know Egyptian hares came out to feed during the full moon? That’s where we get the Easter Bunny from. It was Oestra who changed her pet bird into a rabbit to please the children. And the rabbit laid colored eggs. 

The Romans had these blank days and intercalculary months to keep things even. Sort of like an April Fool’s week every four years... But by 200 BC it was typical for a ruler to tinker with the calendar for the promotion of political ends or to lengthen or shorten an official’s term. Time was in a real mess.

It says here that Julius Caesar hammered out a working calendar 365 days long. Had to. By the time he became Pontifex Maximus, the Roman calendar was so out whack that January was falling into Autumn, if you’ll pardon the pun. It messed with the war season. In 46 B.C. he had to shoehorn in 90 days. I bet there was a lot of squawking when he put 67 days between November and December—I mean winter was already long enough—and he put 23 more days at the end of February which was kinda nice as it caused spring to return to its proper place in March, the official beginning of the year. Extra party time.

Actually Easter was a pre-Christian holiday abducted from the fertility festival of Oestra or Ishtar/Inanna/Isis... or whatever you want to call her—AKA The Great Mother as embodied sex. In Spring, sap rises in more ways than one. Randyness was a religious experience, the sacred prostitutes of the temple saw to that. But Easter got absorbed by the church because nobody was willing to give up a good rut or two for religion.

It says, “that months and years cannot be divided exactly by days and years can’t be easily divided by months has led to intercalculation.” As reward for all his calculated hard work, Caesar took Sextilius, that’s the sixth month, and called it July—from Julius. 

Not to be outdone, his adopted heir nabbed the Quintilius and changed it to Augustus. By 1582 Pope Gregory had to invent yet another calendar as the equinox was off again. A serious matter as Easter falls on the Sunday after the first full moon after the equinox—only we’re still not in agreement as to exactly when the equinox is, let alone, Easter itself. 

Ireland and the Orthodox churches managed to celebrate Easter on a different date than the Romans until quite recently—even the Synod of Whitby didn’t change their calculations or their minds. In the annals I read that sometimes Easter fell as late as May 5. Beltaine, Summer & Cinco de Mayo all rolled into one. Sorry to be so anachronistic. 

Can you imagine the uproar that must’ve caused in Rome? I knew Anthony Quinn was half-Irish, but I don’t think César Chavez was...

Here’s an interesting bit: Ishtar was also the goddess of war...and was capable of unremitting cruelty. I always wondered how sex and war became so miserably intertwined. We have this word, “bloodlust.” She had to go to the underworld to raise up her dead lover Tammuz, who was the god of agriculture. A paradigm shift from the old ways.

Have you seen the comet yet? I haven’t had time. I don’t even know its name. It says, when a comet appeared in the sky on the anniversary after his death, Julius Caesar had ascended into heaven—he was proclaimed a god The priests claimed the comet actually was Julius. A heavenly body. I guess the Christians didn’t invent that either.

A thousand years ago, the monks equated comets with disasters. Portents of what was to come. The end of the world as they knew it. They were right, The sky raining vermin and blood. 

Since September there was a fall from grace, a new age but no new year. Everything is post-September. Sometimes I cry for no apparent reason. There is no comet, you’re imagining it out of the corner of your eye, a tear straining the darkness; it was a plane exploding. Make that two planes, an eye for an eye. 

Yes, I make that pilgrimage daily. No, there is no Easter, plenty of death, yes. No resurrection, ashes, yes. Children, no, yes. No, no phoenix, no time. You know it’s bad when the rats are fleeing, the riddle of the Sphinx, yes, we are crawling, no, nothing. No, the world has not ended and yes, the IRS is still waiting in the wings.

4/3/2002
MFA Playwriting Brighde Mullins