Eat the Sun

Look Up (With Proper Eye-Wear Of Course)

Got your eclipse glasses? Let’s do this!

When it comes to explaining eclipses, you may or may not be surprised to learn that most ancient traditions fall squarely into the story trope that something literally ate (or tried to eat) the Sun.

In Vietnam, it’s a frog. In Japan, it’s the god of darkness. According to Choctaw legend, it’s a squirrel. To the Pomo people, it’s a bear. In ancient China, a dragon.

I was excited when I read about Norse legend and how it was Loki who.. oh wait a minute, he creates wolf-like giants and they swallow the Sun.

But then I found one that was unusual and that I like. There’s a Navajo perspective, from what I was able to glean, where people will sit quietly, inside, and let the eclipse pass as a way of respecting the cyclical relationship between the Earth, Moon and Sun.

That seems nice. Better than being stuck in traffic trying to get to your B & B on I-93 when it happens.

There’s been a lot of nonsense involved with this latest eclipse variant - over-preparing, fish going blind, flat-earthing, and politics and it’s all garbage.

But… and you knew there was going to be a big but here didn’t you… it IS special. And it might, maybe, possibly, be MAGIC.

Just the very fact that those highways ARE clogged, that schools are letting out early, that eclipse glasses are as hard to come by as a silver foil Pokemon, portends a moment.

The eclipse means SOMETHING because it MEANS something to people. And that’s enough. We can all agree that the beautiful symmetry for few moments of that cosmic happenstance is, well, at the very least pretty neat.

And that today, over the course of a couple hours, millions of people are just going to stop what they are doing - just screech to a halt - and look up. (Hopefully, with proper eye-wear.) Or maybe they’ll look down at the sun’s shadow. Or maybe they’ll look through a pin-hole viewer with their kids. Or maybe they will close their eyes and feel the darkness on their face in the middle of the day.

There is the awe and wonder of the universe that happens every day, every moment. But then there are small, immeasurably short, drastically beautiful moments that happen every once in a while. This is one of those. The next time will be 2044.

It’s not a dragon. It won’t change your life. It’s not a sign. But just be present anyway. Be aware. Acknowledge the infinite.

Little Bean’s first eclipse was in 2017