Irregular Shadows
It’s noon and a bit of darkness shades my office window. On today (and today only), that darkening could be a celestial phenomenon or it could be an atmospheric one because it’s a solar eclipse. It will be the last one in our hemisphere for twenty years.
But in a way we have eclipses all the time. When the clouds filter the sun’s rays, they take a bit of edge off that radiation whether they are rain clouds or those high, wispy, paintbrush types. So we are used to the sun disappearing and reappearing. Sometimes hundreds of times a day.
I like it when a moment is charged with portent. When everyone acknowledges that it’s special, which is admittedly something I should be doing more often. Present right now, and all that. But I don’t and even if I did then wouldn’t special just become ordinary? It’s a good excuse. But this moment is actually special because the moon moving in front of the sun is an event to pay attention to.
But in this particular corner of the world, there’s a rain cloud in the way of the actual eclipse. Ironic, since we’re in an arid environment. The ground is thirsty enough to have absorbed the foot of snow that fell two days ago, and maybe the rate of absorption is the best indicator of true dryness.
“It’s in the shape of a crescent, which is precisely how I saw the moon rise the previous week. The sun and the moon are mimicking each other’s shapes.”
The sky darkens and lightens as the clouds move but it doesn’t make enough difference in light that I’d have trouble reading a book where I’m sitting on my back porch. I don’t have the glasses so I’m not going to look at the sun. Instead, I take an indirect method and find something with a small hole (a kitchen colander) and hold it up to see the shadows when they’re there. It’s in the shape of a crescent, which is precisely how I saw the moon rise the previous week. The sun and the moon are mimicking each other’s shapes. I held out my fingers and see for a moment that my own shadow is a bit wobbly. As if the solidity of my being is called into question.
I imagine this is similar to being in what the Celts called a “thin place.” Where the veil between this world and others is smallest. Just like moments of portent, there’s an extra bit of resonance both deep in my chest and prickling on the surface of my skin. Time stretches longer and I’m far more alert, hearing all the different kinds of birds calls and feeling the wind move across my nose. Crouching just a bit more than I was earlier, ready to move should the need arise. Knowing that if that need does occur, my body is going to know it before my brain catches up. I wonder if there’s a version of me here, also watching the eclipse, that I could almost touch.
“The moon, it gets all the glory. We do this darkening-of-the-sky thing every day. ”
Did I learn anything from the obscuring of the sun? I suppose. That darkness, when you pay attention to it, can have many more shades than I gave it credit for. That the same feeling can occur when its just clouds moving over the sun. That I can make a minute special by simply assuming it’s a massive and infrequent celestial event occurring in the space surrounding my planet. Which there likely is, I just don’t know about it.
It was cloudy the rest of the day, as if they were saying – that’s all you got, now it’s our turn. The moon, it gets all the glory. We do this darkening-of-the-sky thing every day. They sighed and re-formed, and then moved on.