Lunar eclipse

One night half a full moon ago, I peered into other people's houses under cover of darkness as I was walking home. Each house had its unique sounds of loud argument, equally loud lovemaking, and even louder plasma screen television. In all three cases, profanities blasted through thin weatherboard walls and lifted off rooftops into the night.

But it was my carousing neighbours six doors down who moved their entire loungeroom onto the front lawn, complete with a case of beer serving as a lamp table. An extension cord snaked out of their front window for the mini bar fridge. Instead of watching hormonal teenagers screech their way towards some dubious title of the next biggest idol, they put their faith in the nightsky to keep them entertained for the evening. They had a quiet (drunken) confidence that surprised me—a lunar eclipse only lasts as long as a shadow moving across the moon.

I stopped at their gate for just a moment to observe alfresco suburbia, but Schrödinger's cat sauntered across my field of vision and wrapped itself around my leg. My neighbours asked me to join them instead so I sat down on the saggy couch, even put my feet up against the low brick wall surrounding a patch of dead grass. A man in a flannel shirt and holes in his jeans sat down next to me, smiled and slurred, "Ahhh isn't it awesome?" He pointed, and I looked up at the reddening full moon. It resembled the face of a girl competing with a boy for the rush of blood to their virgin faces—a type of involuntary natural glow stirred by the transitory attention of strangers, but which doesn't stay forever.

"Only haaalf the earth is privileged to witness this beew-tiful sight, mate," the man said with mock ceremony. I was bitter and angry at the moon, and I was not inclined to agree. Sharing with half the earth was as much privilege as sharing a communal pool with a class of thirty urinating toddlers. And what privilege attached if it was the other half of the earth that was bathed in warming sunlight? I said so.

"Ahhh, but not everyone bothers to move out their couch, you see, and, and, not everyone knows where to look," he said, eager to meet what he perceived was an intellectual challenge on my part. "Don't you want to just reach up and grab it, catch it, or take a picture?" He jumped up and made to grab the moon three times before his energy was exhausted.

"Nah mate," I said, without looking down, "With my cheapo camera you would only get a dot in the frame. I've tried before. You can't capture something beautiful in transit. You had better just remember it."

He grinned, finally satisfied by my answer, and we both looked up and tried to burn the image of the red moon into the back of our eyes forever.