THE DARK TIMES: Were we Connecticut Yankess today?

It is impossible to ignore the eclipse.  

 I went out to my porch and found a hundred little suns projected on the side of the house through the trees.  Consumed, I punctured a box with a pin and held it to the wall and there, a pinpoint of light beginning to crescent.  I remembered 1979 on Bennett Drive in the Hollywood Hills and holding a piece of cardboard up the same way to see the eclipse long ago.

The social aspect of this event.. the phenomenon.. CBS news tracking the pathway .. the darkness, is truly more profound than I'd expected.  In Jackson Hole the moment of the full eclipse was narrated by absolute silence.  The Tetons went dark.  The stillness was profound.  the profundity was profound.  

Across the country, a computer map shows the pathway of the event.. completed now in the Northwest and continuing across South Carolina.  A shot of  the White House. The president removes his solar shades and cannot resist taking a brief glimpse directly at the sun.. unprotected! 

Realizing too late that I have welding glasses here somewhere, I went in intervals to photograph the crescents on the wall.  The event has somehow bound us together?  Icing on the cake was a note from a dancer I met two years ago in Oregon and then a beautiful email from a favorite author, Sharon Doubiago. She is most elusive and, to me, a true genius with her poetry and prose.  

New challenges emerge: even from an accusatory friend who seems  to have no idea why this business of abbreviated tweeting and such is so annoying.  I wonder why anyone finds it cute to use the language of the iPhone to communicate at all.  He thinks I want to change folks. Of course, this is not true. I just want thorough and complete communication. The only way to do that is to sit with the other and take time.  

I do want to change the impatient idiots, three of whom I have seen in the past two weeks who ignored red lights and sirens missing being crashed into by emergency vehicles rushing to help someone. Three idiots, the shrapnel from their crashes had they happened, would have injured or killed not only them, but me and others. 

It's frustrating to be misunderstood, but ultimately, that responsibility falls to me. It's not nice for a friend to call other folks names and take an accusatory tone, but that's the land we live in. 

This: all on a day when the sky went dark and the dark days of the USA may darken darker still until reason returns.  Meanwhile.. 

Thanks to the serendipity of life: an unexpected friend and onward to new challenges and respect for those who may disrespect us.  No tit for tat. Just love. 

michael sheehan

August 21, 2017

Connie's birthday?