It was the night of the Lunar eclipse, witching hour and the three of us stood outside cackling curses at the clouds. There they were, making sure we wouldn't see, that we couldn't see, the moon. It was very rude of them, we sulked, to come and spoil our fun.
Disappointed and embarrassed, the pointy hats had come out for no reason and our neighbors were now staring at us for want of nothing better to look at, the three of us trooped indoors.
My sisters left me to brood the unfairness of a lunar eclipse devoid of occult experience. I had been sure that something would happen, I had pinned my hopes and happiness on something happening.
It wasn't new. I have been pinning my hopes and happiness on something happening for a long time now. Indicators of something happening have included, online horoscopes, the number of mynahs I spotted and wishes made on shooting stars (which must have been airplanes). I was willing to dress up, make believe, party, make an ass of myself, be self-deprecating, day dream, build fantasies but I was not willing to work, try something, fail......
When a scream interrupted my inner monologue. My sisters came flying out of our bedroom. Followed by a bat. Followed by my mothers ultimatum to stop screaming and get the bat out! Balcony doors were opened and because of the power of the witching hour, with the help of my polite but firm directions the little spazzed vampire found an exit and left.
The pointy hats came out again and the three witches sat and dissected the Bat episode. It was renamed the vampire episode, the significance of the lunar eclipse was discussed, perhaps we had discovered a vampire-werewolf hybrid. We disagreed over which one of us it had come to meet or eat. We agreed that it was the power of my sisters screaming and the help of my imagination that made it look like the bat left after my directions. We cackled gleefully and my mother called us batty. Which made us cackle some more. I went to sleep with a smile on my face, something had happened.
Something which made me want to write again. It wasn't easy, I wrote and rewrote this post a hundred times over. I added a phrase, or a line, or a paragraph every week. I excised awful alliterations ('clouds cutting into a celestial conga line'), entire themes which were ahem clouding the post. I started laughing at horoscopes again and I stopped wishing on plucked out eyelashes. I started an internship, I applied for a job and I got a job. My confidence in myself increased.
But those single mynahs continued to plague me. So tonight, on a night which is simply a hard days night I've finished the post. I've written the last few paras, I've reworked the alliteration into the post (even if I had to use a parenthesis) and added one more. Tomorrow when I see two mynahs, I'm not going to wait for something nice to happen, I'm going to come back and change the have in the fourth paragraph to a had.
