Thoughts During an EclipseAugust 21st, 2017 - 12:30 - ECLIPSE/NEW MOON

So, I took a very early lunch today so that I could experience something which, honestly, I was not terribly excited about...  least ways, not in the same way that many of my peers seemed to be.  To me, the build up to the eclipse had been very noisy, very overblown - as several people have observed over the last few weeks, it had been so bolstered in the news, they even knew what it would look like before time...  It had become, so far as I was concerned, something that was more about being able to say that you had witnessed it than something that was meant to be experienced.

Even so, I knew my reasons, so in the half hour before the local Maximum (11:41) I took my leave of the office and my accursed computer and made the short walk over to the coffee shop...  already the sky was dim, and the shadows were beginning to separate.  The traffic still brushed by, but there seemed to be fewer cars than I was used to...  the noise didn't stand out to me like it normally does.

So I order my usual, a crescent, a banana and a large cup of freshly steeped earl grey, and went out to the pagoda to sit and wait.  There weren't that many people around, but those that appeared were a mix of what I expected, sharing around a set of solar glasses and staring upwards.  I even took a short turn, though I found it to be somewhat underwhelming, and returned to my meal, and my occasional indirect viewing.  About fifteen minutes before, I pulled out my journal and began to write off and on, just sitting, and thinking, and trying to experience this thing that used to mean so much to so many people in the past.

***

Shadows multiple...

This isn't the dark of sunset, there is no reddening of the sky, just the subtle muting of the colours as the Sun is slowly swallowed by the moon...  the shadows twist, and suddenly the ground is covered with a thousand shining sickles, pinhole images cast through the trees.

The sounds seem to be muted some now, with the creatures of the evening becoming restless before their time, crickets chirp as the birds return to roost.

I see two...no three shadows...  I ask myself "Which is mine?"  Three versions of me, standing one on top of the other as the sun begins to once more to dominate the lesser light.  It feels quieter, even so, as if the world has taken a deep breath in the middle of the day.  Relaxing, kinda meditative.

There is a part of me that is going to regret not having seen totality this time, the part that is already planning their next trip.  But they are very small right now.  Now, there is only the dawn at mid-day, the slow warming of my skin as I sit here with a cup of tea and just reflect.  Regardless of everything else, the sun still returns.  Myth upon myth speaks to the devouring darkness.  But from the death of the sun rises the Pheonix, fire and hope incarnate, born from the ashes of dead and dying worlds, and from fire, then life

This has been affirming, a gathering of all my thoughts, feeling and emotions of the last few weeks.  I think I've been waiting for this.  I think I needed this, to cast some of my collected fears and anger, the intrusive thoughts that fight me, and cast them upon the pyre and all those that the dying fires of the sun will take to burn, and rise as something alive and shining, the personal good from the bad.

***

The journal has been edited, of course, for as much clarity as it can afford without rewriting the whole from scratch.  I don't know if any of this will mean anything to anyone else.  All I know is that at the end of an hour, I packed up my things and walked back to work feeling better, happier, and I haven't been able to shake that feeling yet.  My cynicism still dominates, but I feel a degree of peace that I didn't have going into this week, and I hope it sticks around for a bit.

Peace be with you, 

J.D. Gryphion