Early & Alone #11: Eclipse
On Monday, a solar eclipse will be visible all over the United States for the first time since June 8, 1918. 1979 was the last time a total solar eclipse was visible anywhere in the US. While the total eclipse will not be visible for everyone (we in New England will only see a 60% partial eclipse), it's still a significant event.
On Twitter, there are jokes about staring directly into the sun and about the eclipse being a sign from nature that it's time for Trump to go, along with general delight that Bonnie Tyler is going to sing "Total Eclipse of the Heart" during the eclipse. In days like these, we need all the small victories we can get.
But all jokes aside, a solar eclipse is primal--it would happen even if all of us were stripped away. It would happen whether or not Twitter exists, Trump exists, democracy exists. It's a reminder that humans are tiny, insignificant, not even blips on the radar of the cosmos. Some days, this is a comforting thought--others, not so much.
This afternoon, thousands of my fellow Bostonians will march on Boston Common in response to a "free speech" rally being held there. It is a direct response to last weekend's horrific events in Charlottesville, this era in which white supremacists have been emboldened to let their hate stream out into the open because our administration does nothing to punish or condemn them.
Much like the eclipse, bigotry, violence, hate, and racism is primal, feels like a story that's been told for thousands of years. White supremacy is the foundation our nation was built on, no matter what the words of our Constitution say. Hate is the darkness that prevents our society from fulfilling its full potential, holding us back with antiquated notions of superiority and inherent worth, that one person is more deserving than another because of skin color or nationality or religion or gender or sexual orientation.
We think of our lives, of history, as progression, as moving forward, as lessons learned and knowledge gained. But looking at the world around us, in 2017, and seeing Nazi rallies and the threat of nuclear war and so much hatred and violence, it's as though we've been going in circles, like the moon.
This morning, I read an Annie Dillard essay on the 1979 total eclipse, which she and her husband drove to the Yakima Valley in Washington state to witness. It's a lovely and chilling rumination on nature and humanity's place in it. She writes of the experience of being overtaken by darkness, total and cold:
"Seeing this black body was like seeing a mushroom cloud. The heart screeched. 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 it was, it did 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."
It's haunting, reading these words, decades after they were published, just days before the moon circles again to block out the sun. Even more haunting was this clip from the evening of that eclipse from ABC News, with a newscaster referencing the world of August 21, 2017, saying, "May the shadow of the moon fall on a world at peace." I picture the world of February, 1979, my mother 21 years old, my sister a toddler, my dad 24, all of my grandparents still alive. Roe v. Wade was less than a decade old, Carter was President, the Civil Rights Movement a fresh memory. In 1979, Russia was still the USSR and was performing nuclear tests--but so was the US. In February, 1979, Roots, a seminal miniseries about slavery, premiered on ABC. In 1979, I did not yet exist, but so much of what we are still dealing with today--bigotry, fear, war, violence--did.
On Monday afternoon, I plan on going to the patio of my office and putting on a pair of the paper eclipse viewing glasses my company is providing, and looking to the sky. I will think about all it took to happen, all the mechanics and galactic miles, the shifting light and shadows so many millions of miles away. I will think about how it seems like nothing changes--the moon's shadow will block out the sun for a minute or two and then life will continue as it does. But we do have the potential to move forward, even if it's not in a straight line. We can't be afraid to look at our history, our prejudices, in the face and do what we can to change them, as daunting and huge as the task may be.
