by Since April 8, when I saw the total eclipse of the sun, I have been feeling more and more melancholy. It wasn’t because I was overwhelmed, or because my vantage point wasn’t great, or because of some epidemic of depression I had while watching the moon turn our planet’s star into a wispy white halo. I was really struggling to find the right words to explain my sullenness all week.
I was scribbling random thoughts in my iPhone notes app as they came up. They came up while I was sitting in a Lyft, they ate pretzel bites at the airport and I collapsed in my aisle seat listening to “Weird Fishes” on the flight home from Indianapolis to New York. I think these thoughts, although not all of them, are related to a certain desire. What I realized is that the 2024 solar eclipse felt so dream-like, confusing and surreal in essence, that the more time that passes from those few absolute minutes, the more my body accepts it as a real dream. And it feels sad to separate myself so quickly. We usually have at least a few months, maybe even a few years, before yesterday becomes cemented into the past. I’m not sure I had a few hours.
The eclipse is already starting to feel like a childhood memory that might have been concocted after watching old home videos—a memory tied to one, maybe two, vivid visions and a deep cradle of emotion. The image of the whole is burned into my brain, but my mind was scattered during those moments because I was panicking about where I should focus my eyes and what you should think about that is important enough to be in the same room as an event that most calls “once-in-a-lifetime.” I was overthinking it. One of the grammatically incorrect note apps literally says to me, “I didn’t know where to look to find out what to do with myself.” The result is that I’m just rapidly mixing thoughts as they merge into a single echo, as I’m sure this story is clear.
Related: I’m going to Indiana to prove me wrong about solar eclipses
On April 8, soon after the eclipse was announced to have begun, I ran out of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway press room where I was sitting to catch a glimpse of the sun. There was no haste; I have even previously written about because I mostly classify myself as an eclipse cynic. I knew it would be cool, even existential, but I wasn’t sure I needed to watch a bit of space traffic to be emotionally moved. I’m the kind of person who can be emotionally moved by anything philosophical, so why would I need to physically see an eclipse? I already cared about the concept.
When I put on my paper cerulean eclipse sunglasses Warby Parker and peered up at the sun, I have to be honest: I thought I was going to be right about my suspicions. The sun looked very interesting. There is no doubt about that. I even texted our Space.com group chat saying that I might want the sun to always look like this, like a “bitten cookie” as my dad described it in a parallel text thread. I have him and my mother. He did. It was like an orange ginger snap with a chunk removed in the shape of a human dentition. Still, I wouldn’t say I felt a big change. But as the clock continued to tick and the totality began to close, I became aware of my breathing. It was scary. I didn’t expect it.
Surrounded by thousands of people on a race track who were involuntarily shouting with glee as the crescent sun slipped into a sliver, I could feel the Earth spinning. I could notice that we were not standing on top of our planet, but that we were stuck somewhere on the side due to the curvature of space and time, and the Earth itself. The crisp winds that flowed through my hair began to feel like streams of individual molecules. The drop in temperature got me thinking about thermodynamics. I wonder where the birds were. A man standing next to me, who had just asked me for advice on his eclipse sunglasses in a serious tone, was screaming “Bro, look at the sky.” I almost cried, and I didn’t know if it was because of the eclipse or if it was because of myself.
Suddenly, I couldn’t see anything through my lenses anymore. The sun was gone. Someone nearby yelled “put them out!” to no one in particular. I did, and I saw completeness.
I conclude that, because my pictures do not do full justice, neither do my words. It would be like trying to explain what a new color looks like, or trying to associate a photo of a sunset with a streaked magenta sky, which is why I have to end this story here. I had to see this in person because it is something that language cannot fully capture; there was something out there that seemed like it shouldn’t be there. Imagine seeing the moon for the first time after many years of living under the empty night sky. It is very visceral to see such a strange Cosmic scene with only your eyes, as though you are traveling to an alien planet with sun, cold black. They were right, whoever they were.
Another of my note app ideas is a lyric from the song “Holy Shit” by Father John Misty. I am not surprised that I wrote this down. It’s one of my favorite lyrics of all time, and I think it can be interpreted in many different ways.
“maybe love is just an economy based on resource scarcity”
Related: I proposed to my fiancée under the diamond ring of the 2024 total solar eclipse
In this case, it made me think about how the extreme rarity of a total solar eclipse, which is rare in part due to the total coincidence of our sun and moon appearing the same size from our perspective on Earth, is why which is my memory of this. the experience I have is valuable, and one I wish would never go away. That’s why he had the power to give me a sunny space in my mind next to the spot I always reserved for the moon.
It would probably be better if we had more love in the world; I don’t believe that love is necessarily an economy based on scarcity of resources, and I’ve always taken that lyric as a sarcastic point about how we’ve come to view love. But, perhaps the best thing is that we don’t have any more total solar eclipses. My cynicism might have been true if the solar eclipse market had been saturated. However, total solar eclipses will remain rare. So, the way they feel for us will be anyway.
Maybe it never touched the sun, or the moon, and that’s where my mistake was thinking that these events weren’t really worth it; perhaps he was short of resources. I don’t think that’s a bad thing. That is simply, perhaps, why a total solar eclipse is considered so significant. Indeed, the one I saw was remarkable. So please accept this article as my formal apology for being an eclipse hater.
