Lunar vulgarity

Yesterday there was a big full moon, and then an eclipse, and folks went bananas about it. I don’t usually go bananas about such things, but a family friend said she would have to tell her son to get a train from the airport home because she didn’t want to miss the moon rise.

So when the moon was out I took a look. It was pretty. Was it unbelievable? No. Did I stay up until 4 am to watch the eclipse? No. But coincidentally before bed I was reading a hilariously pathetic love scene in Gormenghast, the second book of Mervyn Peake’s trilogy, that kicks off in the “lunar vulgarity” of a garden.

“While they stood by the fishpond in which the reflection of the moon shone with a fatuous vacancy. They stared at it. Then they looked up at the original. It was no more interesting than its watery ghost, but they knew that to ignore the moon on such an evening would be an insensitive, almost a brutish thing to do.”