I wasn’t expecting it to hurt.
After totality, after the Diamond Ring dazzled us, after the first light began to fade back in … it was just the same, sorry old world it was before, and it felt kind of awful, to be honest. Like … we saw this amazing thing, and everyone cheered and there was this giant Wow from all over town … and then … people just moved on. It was all over. Nothing left to see here, folks, move along …
And we were bereft in Arkansas of all gods forsaken places (0/5 cannot recommend) and the harsh light and the heat were roaring back.
The rest of the trip was pure crap. Because Arkansas.
Then we faced the slog home, which truly is a slog because Missouri (0/5 cannot recommend). I also strained my low back and everything I ate made me sick. So. Yeah. SUPER fun.
I’m trying not to let the shit eclipse the magic, but damn, people.
I wasn’t expecting it to hurt.
For a while, we were in a magical world, where the light was silver and soft, where the midday sky glowed midnight blue and stars came out and there was a perfect ring of fire right overhead. I felt such joy, such hope, such connection to the Greater All, the Everything, like yes, hell yes, we’re fucking stardust and that up there in the sky … Well that’s Sol and Luna gettin’ it on, which has got to be the supremely (pro)creative act of all time.
I mean, I totally get why our Neolithic ancestors drug the big rocks from hundreds of miles away to make stone circles by which to calculate the journey of the Earth through the Sky, so they would know the next time one of these eclipse thingys was gonna happen. I am 100% Team Rocks – give me a fuckin’ rope, dude, I’m in, let me at that rock pile. I don’t care if it kills me, I’ll move ’em. You want ’em over here? Got it. Hold my fermented beverage.
And maybe back then, I’d actually have felt the world shift, felt something new, understood something wonderful, felt my life turn and change like a key in a lock. Oh, to breathe the new air! Oh to see the new sun, in the new sky! It’s bluer now, don’t you think? Isn’t it all so wonderfully magic?
I wanted that. I wanted all of that. I wanted to feel so on fire with purpose and divinity that I would drag 87 5-ton rocks 200 miles from fucking Wales so mathy smart people could calculate shit, hell yes. They do it all with computers now, so okay, whatever, no rocks. But I wanted to feel that fire, feel that excitement. It’s a new world, a new dawn! Dawn from midday night! How cool is that?
Oh, it’s cool, alright. It’s magnificent, and I am so glad I saw it – even if it hurts. Even if the memory stings like a nettle scratch.
So how do we get back to that feeling?
I have to believe that humans still have the capacity for that kind of larger-than-anything-imaginable wonder and awe. That we can feel such a deep and strong connection to this little velvet-wrapped world that our entire lives can be about doing things to make us appreciate the shit out of it. But me, silly Druid that I am, I love the world, but I’m apparently not in love with the world.
What do we do? How do we get that feeling back? Science and rationality have made wonder kind of obsolete. We know that an eclipse is a rare and wonderful event, but we also know it’s the moon passing between the sun and the earth that causes it. Does that really make it less magical? Can’t we have both worlds? The rational sciencey one and the velvet-wrapped one where Sun and Moon make love in the sky? Can we hold those two ideas in our heads together at one time?
I love the mythic, folkloric, imaginal, shadow-drenched, twilight world. That’s where I really want to live. Where everything means something, where there are real fairy godmothers, and dragons pierce the sky with their fire, and knights of every gender go questing to mediate the sacred into the mundane. I want to live in a crooked cottage out in the woods and make friends with the woodland spirits and offer charms and cures and the occasional curse just to keep things interesting … And dance on the full moon in my night blooming flower clock garden from moonflower to morning glory, as you do.
How do we get that? Does it have something to do with community? With like-minded people joining together to help each other through the 0/5 times so we can get more out of the 10/10 times? Does this mean I have to come out of my hermit crab shell and join the world again? Fuck. Alright. Well. Yeah. Okay. I’ll think about it.