Pissing at the Moon

Pieter Brueghel the Younger's Pissing at the Moon

Tonight the moon will appear larger than is has in 19 years. Last night I stayed up to 4:30 A.M. writing and engaging in guerilla warfare with a raccoon who has been raiding my garbage cans. I never howled, though I've been prone to it from time to time. It is certain that Pieter the Younger's man pissing at the moon used to howl too. But he got older, got a nice overcoat and nifty hat, and matured a bit. Pissing at the moon is much more sublime. I believe that Brueghel still subscribed to Dante's notion (actually a common one in the middle ages) that the man on the moon was in fact Cain with a bundle of brush on his back. The pisser's act of relieving himself thus becomes a subversion of the Cainite culture at large. It echoes Louis Ferdinand Celine's desire, reportedly expressed to Allen Ginsburg and Jack Kerouac, to figuratively piss on homo economicus. Along with the Glanton Gang, we must piss for our very lives.