Thucydides Mooning (July26)

Now that's one moon. For all the cloud. On the Equator there can be no size to the old cheese, angles, math and all that. 

         Invariably up in the East here, at least this time of night. And almost as quickly disappeared as appeared. There... quickly in and out; nice fun and games. 

         Bright even so, behind a range of screening.

         The delightful non-English speaker from Shandong Little Kitchen keeping up a high, energetic wave from the inside footpath while her old friend passed in the other direction on the road. Big smiles. A gallant and one half, she. Mid twenties, yet like so many others from where she hails, such settled confidence and ease. Reads kindly disposition straight as a die; easy as pie.
         — Wow! Where did that gleam come from? Half rat-power at its brightest, earlier. Bright as the advertising. 
         Again. A power. Partly possibly from the blacker than usual pitch.
         Single day from full. Again, bottom carrying faintest of dints.
         Two flashing cops down Lorong 24. An earlier had passed without flash, unclear whether it had taken 24. 

         A third too, flashing but not hurtling.
         Shining still. Possibly rising a trifle the while.

         Mary Beard was continuing with wonderful suggestion, insight, captivation on these ancients, currently Thucydides. J.F.K. did some kind of thesis at Harvard on a re-interpretation of Churchill's study of England between the wars: the latter's "How England Slept" turned by the Pres. to-be into, "Why England Slept?" The relevance to the Greek master in the comparison of the Athenian example in its tussle with Sparta. Marvelously tantalizing studies of Caesar, Cleo, Augustus and the rest from the back issues of the Review on-line. In lieu of other reading in this out-of-place place, wholesome fare.
         Absolutely and utterly blanketed by quart ten. Dim blackness. One barely illuminated fringe of white cloud the only semblance. 

         Then suddenly here she flies once more! Mighty and high. Easy to see how the ancients a few millennia prior to the astronomer ancients of Greece might have danced in the forest glen under the great lamp. Chinese NY in precisely three weeks. A searching out of the orb must be remembered.

         And yet another cop too out of 24A, the female in the passenger seat putting up her hair. Back to the routine of the evening shift after the earlier high-jinks. Sundays were fairly racy here with the workers resting. The biggest night of the week for Shandong Little Kitchen. One fella short while ago needed supervision on the roadway trying to hail a cab. Soon got jack of being ignored. A glance told the cabbies enough.
         A number of street decorations along Geylang Road now too. The long Dragon went up in Chinatown a week ago with the PM lighting the torch and cutting ribbons. But that Chinatown was for the tourists. Geylang was the real Chinatown in this neck of the diaspora. 

         On the walk back a small, high, red balloon or lantern, with naked flame beneath, surprised flitting by, — carried along by the stronger currents above. A reminder of the poor devils in NZ over the weekend in their balloon.

NB. Mary Beard covers the Greeks and Romans for the New York Review of Books.