harvey's journal

lunar eclipse

Last night I stood outside with Rohan and Taran and watched the lunar eclipse. The sky was clear for the first quarter of the eclipse and then began to cloud over. Still, it was clear enough for me to have a good look at the red full eclipsed moon. (I thought of the colour of blood and water.) I didn't stay out to watch the moon come back as it was too cloudy and time for bed.

I'd seen one full eclipse of the moon before in 1981 (or very early 1982) in Ghughli, near Lucknow, in India. I was staying with Latika's family and the put a camp bed up for me on the roof of the house. The village thought I was bit mad to watch an eclipse as the lights of such moons are considered unlucky and many in the village performed a puja for the moon's return. So I'm up on the roof watching the eclipse, which took place around midnight, next to enormous bush of marijuana. Marijuana grew wild all around the village and we'd visited this guy's house in the village (we were there for around a month, maybe more, and I remember visiting, eating, drinking tea, reading was all we did) and I'd noticed this enormous ganga plant outside. The guy thought that, like all westerners, I was a hippy and gave us the bush. We took it back--it would be rude to refuse--to Babaji's (Latika's granddad) and he kept it, as a gift, on the roof of the house.

Before viewing the eclipse yesterday, I attended a very entertaining and informative lecture by Mike Houlahan, arranged by the Wellington Regional Association of the Teachers of English, on 'Dying is an Art: Dying in Shakespeare.'

And, I'm glad to note that Adrian Mole hasn't aged that badly (though it seems dated to me.) I finished reading Rohan 'The secret diary of Adrian Mole' and he had a good laugh at many parts of the book, especially the numerous calamities that befall the dog. It's really quite a brilliant book because Adrian's such a believable character. I guess nowadays he'd have a blog.

Jack Ross has an interesting blog…

posted by harvey molloy @ 7:28 PM