 It was the moment I first began to realize, or maybe just entertain the idea, that there is no God. I was ten years old, laying face up on a concrete bench, staring at the moon in the sky. It was as blue as it is in the painting here, but my ten year old mind gave it infinitely more complexity. The artist’s designs placed on the moon seem tame compared to the personification I was giving it.
Being an atheist was never really a difficult decision for me. My parents were not fundamentalist Christians, and though many of my friends were, they never gave me any shit about it. Maybe that’s because deep down, in their heart of hearts, they knew that I was right. I was the only one of us thinking for myself or attempting to gain a larger perspective on the world.
Black sits atop my list of favorite colors, has for as long as I can remember. Second is gray, with white being a distant third. Some of my friends made fun of me, claiming these were never colors at all, and that my creativity was stifled because of it. I preferred to draw in pencil or ink and shied away from color in all things. My wardrobe represented my taste well, and I suited my personality to match.
I spoke to the moon that night as the face of God, and my reply was as cold and dark as the painting. That is because I never received a response, not one, never. I felt so sincere in my requests to God that I couldn’t possibly be denied - turned down by the almighty. My child-like innocence had extended into the supernatural. I was only ten, not having yet received the education and enlightenment I possess now, but at that very early moment I turned my back on the cold blue moon and turned to myself for answers. God could not help me, and so I would help myself. Staring into the night sky, I had begged God to help my father stop drinking, to end the destructive behavior. When the fights grew only worse, I began to accept and in time grow comfortable with there being no inherent power or voice behind the stars I spoke to each night.
Atheism was the logical choice. It was comfortable and easy because it made sense. It meant I was in control, no matter what. I never had to question anything anymore. I may not have had all the answers, but I knew to finally start looking in the right places. The topic was rarely one of discussion between my friends and I. They didn’t want to go there with me, nor I with them. It was the awkward silence between us, and it grew only louder as we aged. We’ve grown apart as we’ve attended varying universities, but mostly our disillusion with one another is an ideological one.
Isolation, firmness, sharp contrasts – these are some of the things that I associate with my colors, my moods, and myself. There is the finality of black, supremely confident in every decision. The brooding wisdom of the gray, always seeing both sides of things before balancing out. The simplicity of white – its understated demeanor.
When our high school basketball team would circle up to hold hands in the locker room before games, I would close my eyes and think of what a tremendous waste of time this was. Maybe if we had spent more time scouting and less time praying we wouldn’t have gotten our asses handed to us just shy of reaching the state tournament. But I digress.
The moon was faceless, once again, and I never looked up at the sky in the same way. We were on vacation in Hawaii, in the middle of some town plaza when I had this very first moment of atheist epiphany. The sky was dark, but reality was darker. The moon provided no comfort – its bright majesty torn down by my own internal realizations. I had envisioned the face on the moon as the face of my Lord, but soon, that face was nothing but craters on a cold, dark surface. God had left my sky, and I had looked away for good.
It was its logicality, its dark notions of truth. Black, white.
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