The March full moon, a lunar eclipse, and India's festival of color, come to Asheville
The March full moon of 2025, eclipsed, over South Carolina. The March full moon of 2026 was also eclipsed, but in my corner of Wisconsin we did not see it, due to cloud cover.
I was pretty sure of that contrasting feeling a year ago. Seven weeks of dreariness and bad news laid a weight on my back, and though I was doing one of my favorite jobs—disaster relief with college students—I couldn’t shake the feeling of bleakness that was all around me. On Friday morning, March 14, the day began auspiciously, with a lunar eclipse at 2 am. I watched it from a fire station parking lot in a small town in South Carolina. I took a morning nap and drove back to Asheville, and at dinner time, found a street festival on the South Slope. To my surprise it was a North Carolina version of the Holi Festival celebrated in India. The Hindu Festival of Colors, Love, and Spring, commemorating the triumph of Vishnu over Hiranyakashipu, and of winter over spring. The blossoming of love. Holi has it all. How can we keep from singing? And dancing?
The street fest was less than a block long. Twelve tents with curry, drinks, and crafts. Chai Pani, the Indian restaurant sponsor, and a neighborhood brewery with a comedy club, and another bar. There was a domed white photo booth where people were getting their portraits taken in clouds of rainbow colored corn starch. Someone outside the brewery was passing out tubs of it. People smeared it on the faces of their friends. They threw it in the air and danced in the clouds of it. And in the midst of that, the artist, Heena Patel from MELA Arts Connect, coaxed all bystanders and and samosa snackers into moving their bodies.
It wasn’t just a party, it was a transformation. Loud Indian dance music with a leader who drew people from their self-consciousness. She welcomed children and taught them moves. She pulled couples in. She shook and shimmied, and she exalted. She was their leader, she was tireless, and she was for others in every moment. After just twenty minutes, the pacing crowd was all-in for extreme joy. Anxious people (like me, presumably), cool kids, the easily embarrassed (me again), the work-weary, the overly shy, they all just danced, and they lost themselves in a moment and a feeling. If they were strangers, they stopped being strangers. Whatever we all brought to Banks Avenue, we left on the curb. Ecstasy is an all-encompassing feeling of joy, because it helps you to forget EVERYTHING ELSE.
ECSTASY? I looked it up. It’s old French, then Latin, and of course Greek—ékstasis. It’s not methyloxyendiomethamphetamine, a drug that can only approximate a feeling. In this word, there is being taken out of one’s place, or mind. There is trance, and transcendence. Add mystical absorption and experience of connection to the divine. I return to the memories of falling in love, of my three children being born, of hitting a “runner’s high” while swimming laps, of playing pond hockey with family and friends. Glimpses of ecstasy, because in those moments, there was NOTHING ELSE.
For two hours that night, I forgot everything. I took a lot of photos. I danced a little. I shed one tear of relief, and another one of joy. I was reminded that in the long game, love will win, that spring is here, and that we can choose joy, though it’s good to be a part of a community that helps you do so.
