August 12, 2045. That's the next time a solar eclipse will be visible across the continental United States. That will make me 85. No out of the question, I guess, but I'm glad I caught a peek at this one, just in case. It was the third time I've witnessed an eclipse in my life. I'm grateful.
The first was in New York City, of all places. I was building a really strange set piece at the Classic Stage Company just south of Union Square. 13th street, maybe? The piece was a giant whimsical bust of Moliere that I think was the set for a production of The Misanthrope, but I could be wrong. When the eclipse started, we all grabbed dark blue gels from the lighting kit and I think I may have had my welding hood with me. I've told the damn story for so long and in so many ways, that I'm really not sure. Anyway, we went outside and the street was an eerie color - that strange greenish light that you see before tornados in the midwest. I remember looking up and seeing the corona through whatever shield I had improvised. Then I looked down. There on the sidewalk, beneath the ginkgos, millions of tiny eclipses were projected onto the concrete. Each gap between leaves became a tiny pinhole projector, and the ground was covered with sparkling sunbursts. I had never read or heard anything to prepare me for this. There were fairies dancing in the gutter and it was as miraculous an emotion as I've ever felt.
Then, a few years later, in Kentucky, I saw them again.
 |
| Thursday, August 21, 2017; 2:35 PM Lexington KY |
It's hard to picture 2017. So much has happened since then. These were the years BC - before COVID - and nothing back then seems real to me. The country had put a gun to its head the November before, and we were not yet used to the finger resting on the trigger. It had been 4 years since Mrs P decided she was done waiting for me to finally grow/show up. Thursday afternoon... I bet I had just driven home from teaching that wonderful water class at the Beaumont Y. This shot was underneath the big maple that grew outside the window of my divorced incel's cell. Not a lot of happy times in that place, but this was one. The August sun blazed far too brightly for any but the dimmest of bulbs to try looking at it. I didn't have my welding hood anymore, but I did remember the fairies. I looked down, and there they were. Dancing on the sidewalk. Beautiful crescents of hope that covered the concrete and the mulch and the clover. Hopeful slivers were hard to come by back in those days. I was so grateful.
 |
| August 21, 2017, Lexington |
Today was different. The overcast was so heavy when I went to the stoop with my book and my chair that I doubted I would see anything at all.
 |
| April 8, 2024; 1:58 PM |
It looked like another April downpour blowing in. I think we were all preparing ourselves for disappointment. Then, across Broadway, a door burst open. I never see these people. No, that's not true. I see them at the Y. They workout and swim and the Mom took my CPR class once. The kids were all home from school, and Mom was home from work and they had their dark glasses on and were craning their necks toward the clouds. They looked up. They looked at each other. They looked at Mom. She shrugged and sat down on the porch steps with her littlest, while the rest of the kids went back inside to watch Rugrats on their gigantic living room TV.
It made me melancholy. How many chances would these kids get to see a total eclipse? In their lives? What might it mean to them to see the corona and to dance with the fairies under the maple trees? Would they ever have another chance? Or would they spend the rest of their lives rolling their eyes at old people who told stories about falling stars and tides that glowed and a thousand suns turning Greenwich Village into Narnia?
It made me feel gloomy, so I started reading Thich Nhat Hanh to distract myself. He was talking about suffering. These frigging Buddhists are always rattling on about suffering. I read this...
Love cannot exist without suffering. In fact suffering is the ground on which love is born. If you have not suffered, if you don't see the suffering of people or other living beings, you would not have love in you, nor would you understand what it is to love... Do you want to live in a place where there is no suffering? If you live in such a place, you will not be able to know what is love. Love is born from suffering....
Because I suffer, I need love Because you suffer you need love. Because we suffer, we know that we have to offer each other love, and love becomes a practice.
I looked across the street again. There they all were. So sad. I raised my eyes to the place where the miracle ought to be.
 |
| There! See it? |
 |
| Monday, April 8, 2024; 3:10 PM, Lexington KY |
At first, I thought I hadn't been able to snatch it with my phone's camera. Then I looked up until the cloud had covered it again. I did the little two-finger zoom thing, and there it was... a single crescent, a lonely fairie, dancing in the clouds, peeping in and out like Puck and Ariel and all the wonderful imps Shakespeare taught me to love so long ago. Old Sol had come through. I looked across, and the kids were hypnotized. They were gorgeous. I didn't even look at the ground. I saw the light on every one of them. What seeds did I see planted during that moment? What will this memory become? What will they do with a holy afternoon whose visions will stay with them for the rest of their lives?
So, there it is. My third total solar eclipse. If this old house I'm walking around in holds together for another 21 years and a summer, I may get to see my fourth. They won't be easy years. That's a lot to ask. There will be hard nights and heart breaks and break downs and funerals. I'd like to say I wish there wasn't ugliness in the world. But I think I know what the Thich Nhat Hahn would tell me. I know what the fairies would tell me.
They would remind me that all those things are real, but they are not alone. Leg cramps are real. So are finish lines. Shadows are real. So is moonlight. Loneliness is real. So are arms that pull you close. Grief is real. Love is real. We suffer. We love. Both are true. Truth is both.
Each of my precious eclipse experiences has left me with rich memories. I remember the ginkgo fairies from 13th Street. I remember hope scattered on the ground in front of my sad single bedroom apartment. And today? Today, I think I'm going to remember something really odd. I'm going to remember the couple, walking their obese, oblivious, hopelessly spoiled pit bull. She was carrying the phone. He was carrying the leash. He had an enormous umbrella. And both of them... the humans, I mean... both of them had a pair of eclipse glasses dangling carelessly from one hand. It was as if they were saying, "yes, it's a miserable looking day, and yes, we have shit to take care of... but you never know when something amazing might happen."
And so it did.
I will always love them for that.
And I am so very grateful.
No comments:
Post a Comment