Happy eclipse day! I’ve been watching the coverage all day and trying to capture the partial shadow that Colorado experienced. If you’ve watched television in the last 48 hours, news of the eclipse seems to be everywhere. It is the one thing that people can talk about without starting an argument. The coverage all morning on CNN has been fantastic. When the totality covered the sky, people cried, hugged, played music, got engaged, got married, and the news correspondents articulated all their emotions into the camera. Jason and I saw a partial eclipse last fall and it was pretty interesting. Things get a little quieter and the shadows take on a different shape and color, but I can only imagine that a total eclipse is a big deal. I remember the total eclipse that happened a few years ago when the zone of totality went over Wyoming and a bunch of my friends drove up there. The traffic jams that ensued afterwards sounded pretty awful. I have a great desire to see a total eclipse, but I have an even greater desire to not be around hordes of people. I don’t know if I ever will see a total eclipse, NASA says there are four to seven eclipses during the year but most of them are only partial eclipses. Bill Nye said there are total eclipses every 18 months but they usually happen over water. I dunno, I read up about it, there is a lot of geometry and math involved. Suffice to say that total eclipses are rare and umbraphiles will move heaven and earth (pun intended) to witness one.
I am reminded of a fantastic Annie Dillard essay titled “Total Eclipse”. The Atlantic magazine reprinted the essay for today, but the essay also appears in Annie Dillard’s anthology “The Abundance” (if you’re looking for it). In the essay, Dillard writes about witnessing a total eclipse in 1979 in Yakima, Washington. She talks about it not as a fantastic, emotionally stirring, once in a lifetime event but as a kind of reckoning of the human conscience. Reckoning is not quite the right word here. I love Annie Dillard but her writing defies definition. She is the opposite of effusive, she is difficult to follow, and she has a connection to nature that isn’t straightforward. I dunno, I tried (in vain) to teach “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek” to restless seniors for years and I think I would have had better luck teaching Proust to my cats. Dillard’s observations are singular and show the complex and deep metaphoric connections that she makes in her head. For example, after witnessing the total eclipse on a hillside above Yakima she writes:
Seeing this black body was like seeing a mushroom cloud. The meaning of the sight overwhelmed its fascination. It obliterated meaning itself. If you were to glance out one day and see a row of mushroom clouds rising on the horizon, you would know at once that what you were seeing, remarkable as it was, was intrinsically not worth remarking. No use running to tell anyone. Significant as this dread sight was, it would not matter a whit. For what is significance? It is significance for people. No people; no significance. This is all I have to tell you.
Dillard, Annie. The Abundance: Narrative Essays Old and New (p. 13).
Yeah, I dunno either. I think what she is trying to say is how difficult it is to make meaning of a total eclipse when we may not understand our own meaning entirely. Is an eclipse a spiritual moment or a romantic moment or a scary moment? What is the eclipse mean to someone who does not understand how the earth revolves around the sun? What is an eclipse to an astronomer, to an astrologer, to an indigenous tribe, to a bird? If we see the same event through entirely different lenses, how do we settle on its meaning or significance?
I have been thinking all weekend about what the eclipse means to me. I am in a new season of my life and I am just not sure how to navigate it, yet. Challenges abound and self-doubt is plentiful. Is this eclipse a reset button? Is it a reminder? Is it cautionary or reassuring? I think the universe has been trying to get my attention for a while and I think this hubub around the eclipse had a role to play. I am not entirely happy with where I am in my life. This is not to say that I am depressed or pained or unfortunate. I am very content with the circumstances of my life, but I thought I would be a little further along in my own life journey. This year is my 30th class reunion (yikes) and sometimes I feel I have learned nothing in that time. Taking stock of my character development over the decades is not something I am really anxious to do. I am not patient, I am not deeply reflective, and I am easily distracted by dumb reality shows. You’d be amazed at how easily I get in my way and how good I am at doing it! So, if I want to make changes about the course of my life, if I want to do some self-examination to see how I arrived here, if I want to see more progress with myself, I kinda have to make that happen. It might be time to actively get out of my own way, or at least get out of the way of the part of me that is organized enough to make that happen.
Eclipses carry great significance and meaning for so many people. To me, it was a reminder that I am pretty insignificant in the larger scheme of things, we all are. I don’t mean insignificant in that nothing we do matters, I mean that cosmically we are wee, little, minute. We are tiny. The planet we inhabit revolves around a star that will one day supernova and destroy our planet. Our existence on this planet is dependent on so many factors that we know are out of balance. Honestly, it will be a miracle if humanity lives to see the day when the sun will supernova and engulf the earth. But I’m getting ahead of myself. I apologize. Today, for an hour, as the moon moved between the sun and the earth, I was reminded that this is the only life I’ve got to work with. This is it. Yes, I am insignificant, but I am also the captain of this ship. When the moon moved onward and the sun’s spotlight shone down on us again, I got the memo. Don’t squander this life, don’t be foolish in trying to pursue things not meant for you, but don’t forget that you are just a being on a rock hurtling around a star and that is a pretty big deal.
“You do not have to sit outside in the dark. If, however, you want to look at the stars, you will find that darkness is necessary. But the stars neither require nor demand it.”
― Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters