Total Eclipse of The Art
Or, 🌖 🌙 ☀️ a break in stories about being an actor
🦻If you prefer to listen rather than read, I’ve recorded this newsletter above
A perk of not having a “real” job? Of being an actor, not a real person? Of being a non-movie-star who can go out in public? I just arrived home from ten days on the road with the family. We camped with friends in Tennessee, visited cousins in Kentucky and finally made our way to Indiana for the much anticipated total eclipse of the sun.
No shade to Indiana - shade, do you get it - but to quote the college student I met on The Day, “this is the first time I’m actually happy to live in Indiana. Didn’t have to travel anywhere to see something cool.”
My husband had been fastidiously checking the weather in the weeks prior. Our 2017 total eclipse experience had been partially, well, eclipsed by clouds. Still very cool, but we felt robbed of the full deal. This was the last chance to see one in the U.S. for twenty years. So in the days leading up, when it looked like clouds were a possibility again, we were nervous. But, at our “Eclipse 101” class at Brown County State Park on Sunday, Ranger Eli assured us that Monday was going to be: perfect.
Ranger Eli tells no lies.
We arrive at the field near our campsite around 10:30 am, just to make sure we can snag a good spot. I feel a bit anxious, to be honest. But for once, my introverted self is actually happy to have this crowd experience. An astronomical event in which one feels So Small is perhaps buffeted by being So Small with So Many.
My nine-year-old and I write and illustrate logs of the experience, which makes me wish I had practiced my drawing-of-circles more beforehand. You had one job as an eclipse illustrator, Bethany.
1:54 - we see the first teeny dent in the sun and for the next hour our paper glasses go on and off as we observe the moon’s progress. If you stare for more than 20-30 seconds you are sure you can actually see the moon inching its way into place. Sneaky. I see you Moon.
2:34 - the day is still quite warm and the moon continues it’s move so that the sun now appears as a crescent. A crescent sun!
2:50 - the light is extremely strange while the temperature drops quickly, similar to the sunlight and temperature after an evening, spring shower. Eerie but in a happy way. Happy Eerie. The sun now looks like a fingernail clipping.
Moving closer and closer to full coverage, the light around us becomes less describable. Like we’re on another planet where everything is purpley. The birds begin chirping their nighttime lullabies and the crickets croak agreement: “it must be bedtime!” all the creatures seem to be saying.
It’s now 3:03 pm and the light is so strange and the loud excitement from every living thing within earshot so palpable, all we can do is wait and stare up at the last sliver of sun, holding on for it’s dear, powerful life.
The lady next to us begins counting us down at one minute away. She’s probably in her 80s and tells us how excited she is for clear skies, as she’s sure this is her last opportunity to view a solar eclipse. “30 seconds!” Even my parents who are with us and in their mid 60’s aren’t sure if it’ll be their last chance to experience one. “20 seconds!” I suppose none of us can be sure.
At 10 seconds, the light is rapidly fading. Bugs and birds are flying in ecstasy. Even the trees seem to be waving in awe.
And then it happens.
As Ranger Eli had gently explained to those of us who are not professional astronomers: the sun is about 400 times larger than the moon. But the moon is 400 times closer to us here on earth. So what we’re witnessing is this rare occurrence when the moon and sun are aligned just perfectly from our perspective on earth. The moon - the 400 times smaller moon - completely covers our view of the enormous ball of plasma around which our solar system revolves. We’re here to experience the moon, which is not a star, be the star for just under 4 minutes.
“You can take your glasses off now!” the parents who have been hyper-aware of their children’s retinas for the last few hours call out. “You can look at the sun. Without the glasses.”
My dad is playing Cat Stevens’s “Moonshadow” from his car speaker. Some of the people mumble along unconsciously. An amateur astronomer points out the visibility of Jupiter and Venus.
I meant to dance.
Or hug someone? Or put my bare feet in the grass? I just sat there. I said “woooooow”. I thought, now I know why the word wow was invented. I said wow to the people around me. I said wow to the moon.
Like childbirth or seeing your favorite artist onstage, time is now liminal. Both drawn out and too fast, unreal and more-than-real. The seven-year-old and I forget to look for fairies through her special piece of fairy bark. But they must be dancing all around us.
Yes, I am bein' followed by a moonshadow
Moonshadow, moonshadow
Leapin' and hoppin' on a moonshadow
Moonshadow, moonshadow
I try to capture some of it on my phone but like most of the better experiences of life, I have to be willing to live it while I am living it. My phone does not have a soul. It will not be able to give me the experience of my body in this time and place again.
So I stare at the moon. Completely encircled by the sun, as if to say, “look at this delicious perfection of darkness.” From my spot in Brown County, Indiana, the darkness is magic and none of us want to return.
And if I ever lose my eyes
If my colors all run dry
Yes, if I ever lose my eyes
Ohheey, I won't have to cry no more
And just like that, by 3:09 the moon becomes the moon again. No longer the star, though still visible. And our eyes need protection from ol’ sun once again. We grope around for the paper glasses, putting them back over our eyes. Hands a bit shaky, throats a bit lumpy. Our older friend tells my dad she found herself crying. I wish I had thought to look at her. I think I looked at my children, husband, parents. Mouths open. Muttering little phrases of awe. But my mind, my memory, my soul is not a machine. It cannot replay it for me. It can only know the transformation of having lived it.
In Our Town, Emily says “I can’t work at all. The moonlight’s so terrible.”
Sometimes the earth happens to be at a place, and you happen to be at a place upon it, where everything is aligned for awe. There’s nothing to do but live under it. Around it. In it. It’s what we call “The Moment.” It’s so terrible, in the Emily sense, that you never want to leave.
For the last 20 minutes of the eclipse, daylight begins burning down on us again. Most folks are packing up their chairs and coolers, driving back to whatever waits for them on the other side of our sun being completely eclipsed by our moon. But my family, our older friend, the amateur astronomers nearby - all recline, watching the moon move back through our glasses. Begging it to return the other way. Calling out the shapes we see in the sun. “A cat!” “A magic 8 ball!” “A bird!” “A cat!” “A snowman’s head!” “A fat cat!”Until the last little sliver disappears and the sun is the sun again. Burning in the sky, warming our bodies.
Did it take long to find me?I asked the faithful lightOh, did it take long to find me?And are you gonna stay the night
And now, your weekly bonuses…
Notable and Quotable
“Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?- every, every minute?”
“We all know that something is eternal. And it ain’t houses and it ain’t names, and it ain’t earth, and it ain’t even the stars . . . everybody knows in their bones that something is eternal, and that something has to do with human beings.”
~from Our Town, by Thornton Wilder
One Obsession Away
Wherein I share what I am obsessed with this week.
No brainer. Obsessed with full solar eclipses. Full totality. Partiality will not do.
And fairies. Obsessed with fairies.
Also obsessed with the answers from last week’s question “what was your one job that got away?” Thanks to those of you brave and vulnerable enough to say your answers out loud. Obsessed.
Reading this was better than watching the partial eclipse in Atlanta!
I relate to your experience of wanting to capture the experience with your non-soululer telephone, but thinking better of it and living the moment. Over the past few years, it's been hard NOT taking as many pictures of my daughter as she grows up. She's 15 now, and at the age where she can control when and where that happens. The last few years of her life have seemed as swift as an eclipse, but living the moments instead of capturing them is a true blessing!