Eclipse.
I can’t not think it is a portent. Or at least something we are supposed to notice. Whenever things happen upon each other in unusual ways, we are supposed to pay attention. Serendipity. Deja Vu. Happenstance.
It’s just the motion of the solar system. Mathematical mechanics. Earth, sun, moon, crossing paths like colleagues who know they work in the same office but rarely see each other until that day when they keep meeting at the elevator. Oh, hello.
Come here often?
In 1979, I was in 4th grade for the last total solar eclipse on the US mainland. I don’t remember a lot about it other than the teachers at our school closed all the blinds and did not let us outside for the day because they did not want us to look at it for fear of going blind. But I did make a pinhole camera and bring it to school just in case. Had I known the teachers were going to put us on lock down, I might have been sick that day. But at nine, I was not the queen of manipulation and rule breaking that I am now.
Fortunately, my children go to school in an age of more rational fears like gun violence, environmental destruction, and drug-resistant diseases. Their school is allowing them to confront the solar eclipse--with protective glasses.
Block it out
Just because something can be explained, does it mean it is not still wonderful and amazing?
For millennia, people have seen eclipses as warnings to change our ways or as punishment for having not already done so. Perhaps we should heed the cultural call to change it up. An eclipse is an opportunity to step outside our patterns.
We are always looking to the sun for a chance to start time again and do things right--New Year’s resolutions, birthday wishes, solstice-based holidays. Every morning. Today, we get a day within a day--a two-minute dash behind the curtain--to recompose, reconsider, redress.
Rather than letting the machinations of stars happen to you, harness the energy of the planets in making today the day you:
See the big picture.
You can’t take pictures of the eclipse with your phone without special filters so don’t bother. There will be millions of great photos of the eclipse online in a few moments. Notice the shadows on the ground or the tiny pinhole camera images of the eclipse on the sidewalk. Pay attention to the silent birds or your dog weirding out or the random response of street lights. Admire the bespectacled faces of the people around you smiling. Goofily.
Look Up, Look around.
You could, of course, watch the whole thing on your phone while waiting in line at Chipotle, but that would make for one sad burrito. Even if you are lacking those coveted glasses and can’t look at the eclipse directly, go outside and look. Make a pinhole camera or stand outside looking forlorn and perhaps someone will share her glasses with you.
Stand together.
Why is it that a when a song you’ve heard a million times before, that is on the playlist on your phone, and that you could listen to at any time, comes on the radio in the car, you turn it up? Why do you have to hear it at that moment when you could hear it whenever you want? Because you know that other people are listening to it with you. Millions of people across the country are focused on the eclipse today and there is only one truth to it: the moon will come between the earth and the sun. Take part in something we can all agree on.
Here in Chicago, the moon will take its first bite of the sun around 12 noon and reach 85%- 90% consumption for a couple minutes at 1:18. The moon will make its way past the sun by about 2:45. I will be with my kids (and a few hundred others) on their first day of school watching it all go down.
It’s a three hour day within a day, a play within a play. A dumb show that no one ever seems to get. A humdrum star and a couple pieces of rock performing the longest-running shadow theater ever and always telling a different story. The story we want it to tell.
