Friday the 13th

ISSUE #72

It's Friday the 13th, and it's the weekend of the Harvest Moon. Those two things haven't aligned since the start of the millennium, and they won't align again until 2049. It's the night to believe in magic once again.

This moon has power over us, whether it's imbued or otherwise. Its gravity wakes our strongest impulses, tugging our desires with the pulse of the tides. Something inside us is pulled by its tractor beam. It boils whatever is waiting in our blood. It has so much meaning that it obliterates all meaning. This, from Annie Dillard's "Total Eclipse," in 1982—released on the 13th:

"In the deeps are the violence and terror of which psychology has warned us. But if you ride these monsters deeper down, if you drop with them farther over the world’s rim, you find what our sciences cannot locate or name, the substrate, the ocean or matrix or ether which buoys the rest, which gives goodness its power for good, and evil its power for evil, the unified field: our complex and inexplicable caring for each other, and for our life together here. This is given. It is not learned."

The Harvest Moon was important to farmers because it allowed us to work the fields by moonlight. It gave us some extra time in the face of impending winter. Between the settling chill and the endorphins of toil, its conditions demanded one last chance to cut loose. There's a reason harvest celebrations are some of humanity's biggest and best.

So what are we doing still inside? It's time to tear off our shoes and climb to the highest hill. Please, stay out all night tonight, and try to live deliciously; the witching hour is almost upon us.