The Lair of the Emerald Serpent

It was such a crisp and crunchy wicked witchy day. Black Friday with a full moon tossed in was too good to be true. There was the temptation of following the usual route after work. Slinking off to a little park sitting in the sun while reading some juicy book before pottering off to a cafe opposite a very spooky house and hoping there would be some chance of catching the moon rising was the first option. The other was going into the city and up to Kings Park which provides by far the best uninterrupted view to the east. But the days are at their shortest this time of year in Oz and leaving at 4pm and being at the park by sunset at the latest is a bit of a rush on public transport and leaves little time for a pot or two of tea and the papers.

Figured that the spooky house was the less stressful option. It was wonderful meandering along the streets smelling the roses and enjoying the delicate light of the dying sun that is so rare in this part of the world. Also had brought along the perfect book for the occasion. Snaffled in a charity shop this week, it had the intriguing title “How to Rule the World from your Couch”. Always tempted by a power trip, especially a lazy one, just had to take a peek. It wasn’t a parody of some dictator or about politics at all but about developing the art of intuition or as Sybil Trelawney might call it “The Inner Eye”. The strange thing was that a quick glance through the pages contained few of the usual self help buzzwords, the dreaded mangling of so called quantum physics or any mention of believe and achieve or magical fairy dust of any kind.

The tone was more along the lines of starting each chapter with an exercise, doing that first before reading the chapter, recording one’s observations and then reading on. This was more like those ‘how to improve your brain power' books. Try it and if it works keep using it and if it doesn’t , find something else but do keep records of observations as that is the best way to test how well it works.

Now that is a straightforward simple approach that this somewhat skeptical serpent can relate to. For the price tag of two silver sickles, it would be crazy not to take a chance.

The wondrous weather has also been conducive to being in trance like magical states. Will be needing more of that as Camp Nano is around the corner and still no idea what the story is going to be about. Guess that will be a good topic for those exercises in the book.

Took a tiny detour on the way to the cafe and walked right by the back of the creepy spooky house. Also took some pictures of it from there. Next to it are two large vacant blocks of land with stuff dumped everywhere. There was even a well worn path down to the main road amongst all the tall grass and clover. There were some cats running about in the wilderness.



The papers said that the moon rise time was 17.40. So hopefully could catch at least a glimpse before catching the bus at 6pm. Still no trace of the tasty ball of cheese. But by quarter past six it was well and truly visible. Still golden yellow and very large indeed. Felt sort of sad to have missing it appearing over the horizon but then had the inspired idea of trying again next day in the city where there will be no last minute rush to get there. So with a bit of luck will get the best of both worlds. A spooky Friday 13th and a juicy moonrise with a proper picnic.