Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Full Moon Halo

Some nights, usually in autumn or early winter, the Grahamstown moon would come out with a shining silver halo. Something to do with ice crystals in the upper atmosphere, apparently. If the moon was a ping pong ball, the halo would circle it wide as the outline of a soccer ball. The sky inside the halo was always slightly darker - like an iris - giving the phenomenon the look of a huge eye looking down on the town.

Those were crazy mad moons, bathing everything in a breathless, alchemical energy. On nights like that, you felt quicksilver running in your veins, and could almost hear the music of the spheres. 

On thos nights, all bets were off. The whole town went a little unhinged: boyfriends and girlfriends fought, dope-heads lay on roofs and smoked themselves into the bejesus belt, drinkers main-lined tequila and ran amok among the hedgerows.

I haven't seen the halo anyplace since. Have you?

4 comments:

Jeannie said...

No. And I'd forgotten about it till this minute. But it definitely existed. It led to strange rumours flying around too - I was told on one such night that a crazy man (or monster, can't remember) used to hunt for virgins on full moon nights... It really was a strange place!

Miranda said...

Well, not likely to find any of THOSE in Grahamstown

Miranda said...

the virgins that is, not the full moon halo. You got that though, right?

Jeannie said...

I did :-) Do you remember the other old cliche that got trotted out a lot? That Joan of Arc (or whoever it is that has a statue erected to them at the Drostdy Gate) would drop her sword if a virgin ever passed through the gate after graduating? Of course it never happened!