Super Blood Flower Moon Lunar Eclipse 2021
It's happening.
Dear Lunatics,
Last night, I was mauled by a tiger.
The fact that the attack took place in a dream made it no less traumatic.
I woke up gasping and switched on the light, searching for bite marks on my arm.
The teeth may have been spectral, but the pain was very real.
I don’t know about you, but my dreams have been supercharged during Covid.
Every night, I stand for five or six hours under a pounding waterfall of weird images, hugging myself tightly.
I’ve noticed that the full moon seems to make matters worse, and it’s not just my imagination.
In recent years, sleep scientists have confirmed that we do indeed experience more elaborately bizarre dreams around the full moon.
Does the extra moonlight disrupt our normal sleep cycle by suppressing melatonin secretion?
Or did we simply evolve to sleep lightly under the full moon, since its rays illuminate the jungle path for stalking predators?
No one knows.
What I do know is that tonight’s Super Blood Flower Moon Lunar Eclipse will bring you a delirious parade of twisted nightmares, an oneiric Mardi Gras from which you will emerge just a little bit less sane.
Best of luck.
—W
P.S. Since most of you are New Englanders, you won’t be able to see tonight’s lunar eclipse, but fortunately you can watch a livestream of the occlusion via the Virtual Telescope Project, an online observatory founded by the enthusiastic Italian astrophysicist Gianluca Masi here:
P.P.S. In May 2021, I adopted a daily practice of blind drawing (a drawing sketched without looking). Please follow me on Instagram to see the results.
(Flannery O’Connor, judging you)
In Indian culture, many festivals and rituals are linked to the full moon and the new moon. I had read that since 70% of our body if filled with fluids the gravity of the moon does have an impact on our body and mind.
Climatologists have done enough research about the impact of the full moon and new moon on the tides, this phenomenon probably applies to us too on a limited scale.
Older people measure their lives in terms of the number of moons they witness. A complete life is considered to be about 1000 full moons. In Sanskrit it is called "Sahasra Chandra Darshanam"
Have you explored the Indian cultures perspectives of the moon?
I’ve been dreaming about big cats during Covid, too. Lions and tigers prowling around in conference hotels or office buildings where I am supposed to be working. Or they’re in the elevator. And, hey, your Flannery looks like Jackie O!