eclipse

I didn't skate for many days, because in the mythology of your people, it is an unclean activity to do when an eclipse is foretold. An eclipse was foretold, so I packed up some camping gear and went on walkabout for a couple of weeks. I saw a rattlesnake. I saw some mountains. I walked a lot, and shit in the ground. I met some hippies. I went up to a place called cheoah bald and saw the eclipse. First the light got dimmer and weird, like the onset of a psychedelic experience. Then I watched through my glasses as the black disc spread across the red circle of the sun. About five minutes before the totality, it was pretty clear something extraordinary was happening. The red sliver of sun shrank and shrank, shaped like a fingernail clipping. The glasses are so black that you can't see anything through them unless it's the sun. When the totality happened, a gasp collectively rose up from the dirty hippies on the mountainside, myself included. The astonishment I felt was like nothing I have experienced in my life. People around me wept, cursed and shouted and clapped. It is impossible to photograph what the sky looked like. In every direction, the clouds were in shadow, like a 360 degree sunset. It got cold, and the animals stopped making noise. A few stars came out. The suns corona, endlessly brilliant, divinely perfect, did something we don't have a word for in English. When I took my glasses off and looked directly into the sun, I saw this perfection of light, a ring of sun around the blackest, mist perfect circle I could ever imagine. The hue of the sky around was beyond words. Like peaking, I lost track of time, and the memory of totality seems like an eternity. In reality, it was about two minutes. The edge of the moon started bleeding red, and suddenly the sun as I know blasted back into being and we all simultaneously ducked and shielded our eyes. If you ever get to see a totality, do it. Lie, cheat , steal, kill, save up money for a trip, do whatever it takes to get there. Nothing in all my life compares to it.