Last night's rare full lunar eclipse reminds me of an episode in my past. I was between wives and suffering from both bruised ego and self-esteem. During that time I met a young woman that I liked quite a lot. She was blonde and gorgeous, and heavily into just about any form of drug you could think of at the time. As a
Miss C and I had a short and fiery romance during which I met many of her often shady acquaintances. We once visited the apartment of a dentist. The young man was handsome, refined and obviously intelligent and I wondered at the time why he was sitting alone in an apartment lighted only by candles and decorated with psychedelic rock posters. He was high on weed as he listened to The Dark Side of the Moon, a moody album by Pink Floyd.
As Miss C and I smoked dope with the man, our conversation mostly concerned drugs and psychedelia. I remember him saying that The Dark Side of the Moon was the most important album ever pressed. He suggested that Miss C and I should attend a laser concert of Pink Floyd music held every Friday at the fair grounds.
Miss C and I did attend the laser concert along with a thousand stoned young people listening to Pink Floyd through state-of-the-art amplifiers while watching a laser light show on the ceiling and walls of the stadium, the odor of marijuana so strong that you didn't even have to light up to get high.
Months after splitting for good with Miss C, I read the young dentist's obituary in the newspaper. Like so many young people during that era, he had overdosed, and died alone on the floor of his dark apartment.
Years have passed since that short episode in my life but I'm still reminded of it whenever I hear Pink Floyd's rock anthem Eclipse on the radio - a common occurrence as the album remained on the Billboard 200 for fourteen consecutive years, the longest amount of time in history for any album.
I’m sad because it was much too cloudy in this part of