"Click" - My 2017 Great American Eclipse
I won't be able to view the total solar eclipse next month, but here's how the one in 2017 changed my life for the better.
Click.
That’s what it feels like when the moon positions itself perfectly in front of the sun during a total solar eclipse. It slides into place like buckling a seatbelt.
For hours prior, the two celestial bodies are slowly converging. Before the moment of totality, it doesn’t look like anything. The sun still dominates the sky. The beams are blinding while the moon remains hidden. Under the paper-built eclipse glasses, the sun is just an orange ball getting slowly covered by a black ball.
But then, at the exact moment scientists can now predict hundreds of years in advance, an area of darkness bursts across the sky, the outer layer of which is a circular sunrise (or sunset? There’s no way to tell the difference).
In the center, appearing seemingly out of nowhere is a perfect black circle with heavenly light flaring around it. But there’s no way the black circle could be the moon. It’s massive. Far bigger than the silver staple we see every night. Not even the fullest moon or the occasional “supermoon” was even half the size of the obsidian giant that was hanging before me.
It was breathtaking, and it only lasted for a hundred seconds.
The countdown begins.
When the “click” happened, the natural rotation put a blunt in my hand. I tried to return to pass it on, but my friends were distracted by the reason we had all come to the Oregon Eclipse Festival.
My heart is racing. I can’t waste this. It’s once a lifetime.
I toss the blunt aside, but then my internal alarms go off. At least 20 times (not exaggerating) within a week of arrival at the festival, the organizers emailed us warning of catastrophic fire danger. That we could not, under any circumstances, throw away roaches on the ground.
Seconds are counting.
I look for the burning end and ensure it’s put out.
I try to look up at the skyward magnificence through my eclipse glasses. And I can’t see anything. My aunt told me that you can’t look at the total eclipse without glasses (and I was too stupid to look it up on my own because if I did I would have known the total eclipse is completely safe to view).
I’m freaking out. Do I have to burn my retinas to see what I drove 14 hours from LA to see?
I don’t care. I took off the glasses, squinted it out a bit, and took in the image I just described above. I saw it. And I’ll never forget it.
But the seconds are still counting.
And I want a picture.
But I can’t look at the unfounded and incomprehensible beauty through the viewfinder, so I have to ballpark it and use the LCD screen. Generally aiming the camera up, flailing about until a flash went across the screen, I managed (in about 30 of the 100 seconds) to grab two pictures.
One was a blurry mess. The other is below. Mission complete.
The seconds, you guessed it, are still counting.
I go for another look, still believing that I was frying my retinas.
Then there’s another click.
Not of the ending of the totality.
But rather a diamond. Princess cut to be exact. The most pristine form of sunlight I could ever possibly imagine hovering there next to the still-black moon.
Then I notice something else.
The moon, while black, has reverted to its normal size. It’s like the sun siphoned the moon’s extra energy into an explosion of its own light.
And then the seconds run out.
The sky is that darker shade of blue that hovers around after every eclipse, and the moon and sun are going their separate ways.
I feel completely empty and I don’t why.
The only prevailing thoughts running through my head were based on the idea that I wasted that opportunity. I had been looking forward to it literally for years and I wasted it.
“How could I be so stupid that I didn’t look up whether the totality was safely viewable?”
“Why did I waste 10 seconds making sure that cigarette was out? I’m always way too cautious. It wasn’t going to start a fire. I’m such an idiot. Why do I worry so much?”
The self-hatred was endless. I slunk my way back to my campsite alone and spent the next day of the festival sulking.
All I could focus on was what went wrong. Begging the universe for the chance to go back in time. Blaming myself for not creating the most magical moment ever. Or rather, moments, because that’s all you get with an eclipse. A few moments.
I wanted those moments to be perfect. I wanted to walk away from it a different person. I was hoping that “click” would happen internally as well — that after 24 years of mistakes, regrets, and failures (that’s all I thought my life was) forces beyond my control would show me the light towards a new path where there wasn’t something clearly wrong with me, infecting every aspect of my pathetic existence.
Well, it turns out, my hopes came true.
When I was driving back down to LA, the feelings of regret and shame were welling up to the point that I couldn’t concentrate on the road. I pulled over on the shoulder overlooking Upper Klamath Lake. This was a tight shoulder, too. When other cars sped by mine would rumble.
I was watching the water trying not to lose my mind. Repeating to myself, “Why wasn’t it perfect?”
“Why wasn’t it perfect?”
“Why wasn’t it perfect?”
“Because I’m not perfect.”
Holy shit.
I’m not perfect.
And that’s OK.
Up until that moment, I didn’t realize that.
That it’s OK not to be perfect. Because nothing actually is. There is no perfect person, place, thing, event…
…Not even a total solar eclipse.
I will make mistakes, like not looking up whether I can safely view a total solar eclipse. I will overreact, like freaking out that a cigarette butt will cause a fire. I will do plenty of things wrong. I will miss opportunities. I have regrets. I will fail.
So will everyone else.
But I’ll still have my pictures of the eclipse. I will still remember its unimaginable beauty.
And what’s more, I’ll walk away from it a different, more grounded person.
Click.