I cried later in the shower that evening. Just overwhelmed a bit and listening to music (Bee Gees “Loose Talk Costs Lives” if you wanna know… I think it’s kind of funny).
Thought of the moment with the warm water running down my sun-battered scalp. Some hippie friends were doing the Dark Side of the Moon challenge so the songs lined up. It worked, but it was such a trip thinking about how my dad and I used to bond over that music and all the complicated feelings that come with the death of a parent etc. I dunno… so many feelings lined up with the humbling sublime awe of astronomical events and I just cried hard in the shower in a way that felt so freeing.
Now I already want to see another one. My husband was saying if it’s too cloudy maybe we could plan around trying to see another one in the future. But now even though it wasn’t too cloudy I kind of want to anyway because it’s just really cool.
I understand what you mean. Years ago My husband, I and some friends took a trip into the desert (between Arizona and California). We were driving at night. At one point, we stopped the cars, turned off the lights (there were NO lights on the road. we were out in nowhere).
In that clear desert sky we looked up and saw the Milky Way in all it’s glory painted overhead. It’s a real spiritual experience. And I’m not religious at all. But you feel totally at one with the vast Universe. You feel small and large at the same time. And you realize that for millions of years most humans spent their nights looking up at this same sight. So, now you are traveling in Time as well as Space.
My only advice to those taking pictures of totality: don’t forget to stop futzing with your gadgets and look at the eclipse. I used some sort of iPhone app that took pics every 10 seconds or so back in 2017. Sadly, did not turn off auto-focus, didn’t zoom in enough, so the pics I did get were potato-quality at best.
The only useful info was GPS and time/date info. Yay metadata!
Seriously, watching the moon’s impossibly black disk slip into full coverage brought serious chills up & down my spine. Try not to miss that moment. Vihart’s description is much better than mine.
This is exactly why astronomy is my hobby. “A tiny part of something incredibly huge and beautiful” is how I’ve tried to describe the feeling, but the words don’t even get close.
Somehow I could imagine doing this on my third or fourth eclipse, but not on my first. It was so emotional and thrilling for me, I’d want to be sure I was fully present.
Of course, perhaps there are some people who are more present on drugs, but I can’t imagine it for myself.
