1 Meghan McCormack Submission to Gastronomica July 20, 2013

Luna Calante, Luna CrescenteWaning Moon, Waxing Moon

Five of us, already rowdy from a noisy dinner and a gathering in the square, pack into a little polo car and set out on the night drive through the winding roads out to the Casentino countryside, situated in the naval of Italy. On the side of wood-lined road,we spot a slithering, quick flash of amber fur and a blazing set of eyes: a fox. In the short story, The Fox, D.H. Lawrence sent the the animal self rumbling into British Literature after eras of so called disassociation with natural and sexual urges. The appearance of the fox on his fictional setting represents the return of the animal in the human psyche after the poor thing had been muffled by reason and society and manners. The characters on Lawrences farm become deeply unsettled and violent as the fox lurks around. Any notion that they are in control of themselves is shattered as the animal within them takes charge. The appearance of a fox in this area was a nod to the great D.H. Lawrence in my mind, and I quietly paid homage to him from the backseat of the polo. He was kindred to these parts and wrote discerning prose about the sensual honesty of the Etruscans in his Etruscan Places. The pre-Roman societies of Central Italy leave behind art that has what we could call a Bohemian flair compared to the stiff works of the Romans. Their pagan exuberance seemed natural as the sun on the grass to Lawrence. He found great relief in

2 their unharnessed relish for life and the evident joy in Etruscan frescoes of dancers and fishermen, musicians and lovers, deities and partiers immortalized in motion in their art and tombs. His reverence for the Etruscans is connected to their unabashed celebration of the fox within. They seemed to joyfully succumb to natural powers beyond themselves without attempting, like other societies to conquer, repress, and control. Thoughts of Lawrence and the Etruscans put me in the party mood. Like the emergence of the fox, which signaled to the power of natural forces beyond our control, I was to discover that night, a natural force that people in the area had obeyed for centuries-- la luna.

The party was raging in one house in an otherwise vacant gathering of stone houses that had to predate the seventeenth century. Not quite a village, but not a single house, just a cooperative cluster built perhaps, once upon a time, for an extended family. Some were dilapidated and crumbling, others were holding up quite well. All but one seemed dark and deserted, and that one house was hoppin. Entirely lit up with red light, people spilled out into the driveway and onto the second-story terrace while hushed fields loomed in the distance. Inside, the red light set a kind of warm, robust mood. I found tones of red refreshing because the buildings in Tuscany tend to be consistently beige and gray, which dumbs down the amount of colors Im accustomed to seeing in an American day. (Though it commands that I pay more attention to shapes and when Vasari has designed the shapes, that is not such a bad thing.)

In my Lawrence mood, I saw it as an electric, 21st-century version of the reds, ochres, and blues of Tarquinias painted Etruscan tombs. There were polka-dot walls and fuzzy red chairs in the kitchen with a banquet table covered in food and open wine bottles and empty cups and half-full cups. The table led into another room with people plopped on cushions and pillows and standing as a band played in the corner. The hostess was a graphic designer who traveled from room to terrace to room, wine in hand. She had bathed the house in her own designs. I wandered upstairs through the clusters of people and eventually found myself on the terrace drinking my third or fourth plastic cup of wine, chatting away with a group people. The most striking stood at over six feet three inches and wore a ripped t-shirt and had three dangling earrings in his left ear. One of them was a lightning bolt, which seem to wink at a checkered, revolutionary past. Amid conversations about some punk band corrupt world politics, and speculation about whether the shyest one of the group would get up the courage to say hello to the girl he spotted at the entrance, the tall one lifted his head skyward and said. Look at that moon. You could plant tomatoes in a phase like this. The moon was not yet full. What are you talking about? What does the moon have to do with tomatoes? I asked. You never heard of planting by the luna calante o luna crescente?! He laughed and shook his head as though I had never heard of water.

His initial, wine induced explanation was that the moon helps pull some plants out of the ground more rapidly and allows others time to germinate in the ground. Some things need

4 to be planted while the moon is waning so they can do their thing underground without any gravitational pull upward. Others will have a more robust harvest if planting during a waxing moon. The gist of the idea, which predates Roman times, was that when the moon is waxing, lifes flux is in a state of abundance and growth. Therefore, it is an ideal time to plant. Alternatively, when the moon is declining, it is time to prune and harvest. There are a few exceptions to these rules. Similarly, specific tasks were reserved for la luna silente or dark moon. Oh yeah, it affects hair too, the shy one added, I try to get my hair cut during the waning moon, because it wont grow back as fast and I save money. Me too, said another friend. Except last time I really needed a haircut, it was during the waxing moon. Now my hair is growing back really quickly so Ill have to pay for another one soon. The way they conspired together to tell me made me think they were yanking my chain. A hunch possibly confirmed when I later read that the Roman dictum that to avoid baldness one must cut hair during the waxing moon, not waning. I suspected the shy one feared baldness. At first, it all sounded like superstitious hogwash. But, I started inquiring, I found countless references and articles about people all over the world who still respect lunar planting patterns and claim it works. There seems to be some slim scientific measurements and a lot of simply observed results. The Roman writer and naturalist, Pliny the Elder whose relentless research and curiosity led to volumes of written works on the Natural world, claimed that The moon replenishes the earth; when she approaches it, she fills all bodies, while, when she recedes, she empties them.

5 When I ran this by everyone in that area who had anything to do with working the land, they seemed to know all the rules like second nature. Without hesitation or over questioning, a lot of them still throw their seeds in the ground during the waxing moon and reap and prune during waning. It was commonplace for so long that it became common sense, I suppose. If the old- fashioned farmers did follow the moon cycles for centuries and there must be something to it. Whether we realize it or not, we still obey the moon, dont we? Our months are roughly 30 days long, which coincides with the length of a 29.5 day lunar cycle. Our months could just as easily be called moonths, the origin of the world. Women are ruled by the moon, at least our bodies are in sync with her rhythms. Who can suppress the moon-pulled ocean tides? She is just as powerful as the fox, so its time we pay attention. So, do apples taste better when picked in the waning moon? Some would attest. Does she influence the flow of water to the soil? And the way a seed germinates? RJ Harris, a gardener in Cornwall divided his potato and other crops into sections that follow lunar patterns and sections that dont. He claims that the lunar patches were much more abundant and healthy. In his book, R. J. Harris's Moon Gardening: The ABC of the Cornish Head Gardener's Moon-Managed Production of Common Soft Fruits and Vegetables, he asserts that tide water is not the only water pulled by the moon, the water beneath the soil is subject to the same force.

The belief in the gravitational influence of the moon on water beneath the soil, once suggested by Pliny, though in pre-Newton terms of observation and intuition, is believed by modern Biodynamic famers. The logic of lunar cultivation is back and gaining

6 popularity. Some biodynamic farming methods are dismissed as new-age nonsense because some incorporate astrology. Though, some are willing to accept the mystery and carry on and many organic farmers seem happy with results. Maybe some take it a little too far with the astrology, but isnt it more logical in a way to follow the skies timeless pictures than the calendar app on the iphone? They are probably falling under the same spell as people in earlier societies who injected guiding symbols with their own meaning. There are plenty superstitious parts of Roman or Egyptian or Tuscan contadino lore have fallen away. For example, Egyptians were wary of onions, because it respond to the lunar schedule that the other plants did, therefore they must have been unnatural. Also, in some ancient times, the moon was thought to be responsible for the size and girth of hens eggs or the pungency of ones breath when they ate garlic and leeksmaybe if grown in a certain part of the cycle, they would be less potent. I came to understand that the served as guide which seemed to work. The symbols were formed a sort of book of instructions. Though imbued with superstitions over time, the logic behind it, besides the moons potential effect on us and our land, is simple. When the superstition is shed, one is reminded that the sky was the calendar for so long, and when the sky acts as supreme law of time, it makes room for intuition not found in minds programmed to rely on checkered paper calendars. Virgil makes constant reference to the sky in Book One of The Georgics, written in 35 B.C.E.

Set beans in springtime, the alfalfa happens in collapsing furrows, and millet clamors for its annual attention, when Taurus, gilt-horned and incandescent, gets the new year up and running, and the Dog succumbs to his advance. But if youve

7 been working towards a strong output of wheat or youre heartset on hardy ears of corn, hold off until one of the Seven Sisters steals away from you at dawn and the star of Knosseos, the shining Northern Crown, retires. ( Virgil, book One lines 215-221 page 13.)

Similarly, Roman scholars who wrote agricultural guides Cato, Pliny, and Varro all reference lunar laws, discussing which phase of the moon in which astrological sign is ideal for certain chores. Let the story lead you. Wouldnt it delight the imagination to follow a stellar story instead of a gridded set of lines? The sky held them in a pattern that helped them survive, whether the idea behind it was purely logical or not. When to slaughter (when the moon is waxing for the tastiest meat), when to shear (a waxing moon will ensure that fur grows back thick, quick and abundant), when to dig a ditch (in the dark moon the ditch will hold better), tilling a field (in the dark moon because weeds wont germinate as quickly in the absence of moonlight), when to plant root vegetables (underground during the waning moon when the moisture levels are lower). Things to be preserved, cured or dried such as raisins or prosciutto were to be pickled or cured during the waning moon for holding purposes.

The fields all around the party were quiet and cool and partially illuminated by the moon, while we became rowdier, in our splash of color and wine and lunacy. If we could crack the code of the Etruscan language, I wonder what they would have to say about the moon. Tiv, the Etruscan moon goddess was revered. Does it add to our rapport with the environment if were in tune with the moons moods? She has certainly acted as a

8 shepherd toward our agricultural well-being and our hormones certainly obey both her and the fox whether we admit it or not. As much as we try to wriggle out of old pagan ideas, they are too ingrained in the history of our survival. Lawrences fox appeared in modern literature to remind us that we too are animals, instinctual and potentially wild. Each night, the moon sneaks up on the surface of the earth, and in the same spirit, can show us that we are intuitively in sync with her quiet magic. The table loaded with food beneath us, the party raging around us, our lunacy and lust and endurance are evidence that she is a trustworthy guide.

Bibliography

Books

Blyth Klein, Maggie. Feast of the Olive: Cooking with Olives and Olive Oil. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1994. Dalby, Andrew and Grainger, Sally. The Classical Cookbook. London: The British Museum Press, 2006. Encyclopedia della Cultura Contadina. Florence: Casa Editrice Bonechi, 2004. Gies, Frances and Joseph. Life in a Medieval Village. New York: Harper and Row, 1990. La Cucina Regionale Italiana. Milan Mondadori, 2008. Lawrence, D.H. D.H. Lawrence and Italy. New York: Penguin Classics, 2007. Petrini, Carlo and Padovani, Gigi. Slow Food Revolution. Milan: Rizzoli, 2005.

9 Virgil. Georgics. Trans. Peter Fallon. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Internet Sources Apicus. De Re Coquinaria Book III, The Gardener. Trans. Walter M. Hill. 1936. http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Apicius/3*.html Cato. De Re Rustica (On Agriculture). Trans. by Andrew Dalby. London: Prospect Books, 1998. http://www.soilandhealth.org/01aglibrary/010121cato/catofarmtext.htm Encyclopedia of Food and Culture. Apicus. Phyllis P. Bober. http://www.enotes.com/food-encyclopedia/apicius Holistic Agriculture Society Catos Life. http://www.soilandhealth.org/01aglibrary/010121cato/010121intro.html Pliny. Natural History. California Digital Library. http://www.archive.org/details/plinysnaturalhis00plinrich Roach, John. Age-Old Moon Gardening Growing in Popularity. National Geographic News. July 2003 http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/07/0710_030710_moongarden.html