Oh, what a temptation to go back to the total eclipse of the heart video wars! But, I’m not going there. No! No! No! Just say NO!, Nancy Reagan, just say “no”.
By happenstance last night, I was listening to some all night classical radio and as the moon turned into a reddish blob about 2:30 a.m., I heard a tepid version of the Toreador Song from Bizet’s Carmen. What I heard was an instrumental version by some orchestra or another. Since the tune has been running through my head earworm fashion, I thought I’d share this vivid version from the movie, Carmen (it gets gooder about 2:15 into the video):
I don’t know about the rest of you and your experience of the lunar eclipse on the night of the Winter Solstice, but it was a weird night for me in several ways. First, let me remind you that our Christmas holiday is a tepid replacement for the celebration of the longest night of the year, celebrated for thousands of years by our ancestors as Bacchanalia, a night of drinking and free love, the grandest party of the year. Not in any sense of the words “Oh Holy Night” was the solstice in times past. If I understand correctly, the eclipse last night on the solstice hadn’t happened since the 1600s when Galileo was still under house arrest. I miss Galileo’s, by the way, for a random bit of free association.
Speaking of free association, I had to call MCARP last night about 2 a.m. to tell him of my own free association with his ethereal hippy chick. I went to jazz jam at the gold dome last night for a little music while I was waiting for the sun, moon and earth to get lined up. As I was leaving sometime around midnight, I ran into and spoke for a few minutes with some young people who were headed out to watch the eclipse and to do a little extra-curricular reveling. Among this group of music lovers was a very slim, tall young woman with long hair dressed in boots, jeans and an Army surplus jacket and it turns out she is a lawyer, just three years out of school which would make her about 28 years old. You’ll never guess her name: Stevie, as in Nicks. Luckily, MCARP was out watching the eclipse, so I didn’t wake him up and we had a good chuckle over his ethereal and superficial love object and other mysteries of life.
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