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| Photo by laura skinner on Unsplash |
Unfortunately, I had to confine my solar eclipse viewing on Monday to NASA live-streaming since I procrastinated on getting eclipse glasses until it was too late. Even so, what an amazing event! I got goosebumps watching the sun reappear after being hidden by the moon.
In honor of Monday’s eclipse, here is a passage from
Virginia Woolf’s The Waves that beautifully describes the reappearance
of light:
“How then does light return to the world after the eclipse of the sun? Miraculously. Frailly. In thin stripes. It hangs like a glass cage. It is a hoop to be fractured by a tiny jar. There is a spark there. Next moment a flush of dun. Then a vapour as if earth were breathing in and out, once, twice, for the first time. Then under the dullness someone walks with a green light. Then off twists a white wraith. The woods throb blue and green, and gradually the fields drink in red, gold, brown. Suddenly a river snatches a blue light. The earth absorbs colour like a sponge slowly drinking water. It puts on weight; rounds itself; hangs pendent; settles and swings beneath our feet.”
We can choose to use an event like an eclipse as a marker
between one time and another if we’d like to make a new start or shake things
up. Or it can simply be an awe-inspiring natural event that adds a little
excitement to our ordinary days. One more everyday adventure for the
remembering self.
Did you watch the eclipse?
One more thing—at the post office yesterday, I bought these
cool stamps. They use heat-sensitive ink to mimic an eclipse:
Isn’t that cool?
