It's been a hard day's year
Not sure if It’s A Hard Knock Life or A Hard Day’s Night, but either way, it’s been a rough one.
The 2020 solstice falls on a new moon—that means there is no moon—it is a time of darkness and rebirth. This solstice also hosts a solar eclipse—that means there is no sun on the longest day of the year. Not sure why, but for some reason, a solar eclipse on the solstice, the day the sun stands still, feels just a bit ominous.
But in the corona, a day with no moon and no sun just doesn’t seem that surprising. Reminds me of a meme I saw the other day, “It sounds like thunder outside, but with the way this year is going, it’s probably Godzilla.”
I think it’s just an eclipse on the new moon, but, with the way this year is going, it’s probably the end of the world.
Since time and distance and society are all out of whack right now, perhaps standing still is exactly what we need. On the summer solstice, at the literal and metaphorical balance and pivot of the year, what do we see? No real answers, but a lot of questions.
The school year that didn’t really happen is over. What did my children learn? How does their new-found independence and resilience make-up for what they lost academically and socially?
The world is talking about and listening to its legacy of institutionalized, systemic, and internalized racism. What do we do need to do to continue the conversation?
Summer has arrived. How will we grow this season after everything that was sown this spring? What will be ready for us to harvest in the fall?
What does it mean to ____________ at this moment in history? (Fill in the blank. Suggestions: shop, take the train, sneeze, work, smile behind a mask.)
What now?
Today is June 20—6.20.20 or 20.6.20 depending on where you are in the world. A year and a month—midsummer and all summer—in one day. Ray Bradbury’s short story of life on colonized Venus where the sun comes out only once every seven years gives us a lucid moment amid disaster.
It was as if, in the midst of a film concerning an avalanche, a tornado, a hurricane, a volcanic eruption, something had, first, gone wrong with the sound apparatus, thus muffling and finally cutting off all noise, all of the blasts and repercussions and thunders, and then, second, ripped the film from the projector and inserted in its place a beautiful tropical slide which did not move or tremor. The world ground to a standstill.
And on Earth, in the splice of 20/20, the sun shone, too.
