From all the hills came screams. A piece of sky beside the crescent sun was detaching, a loosened circle of evening sky, suddenly lighted from the back. It was an abrupt black body out of nowhere; it was a flat disk; it was almost over the sun. That’s when the screams began. All at once this disk of sky slid over the sun like a lid. The sky snapped over the sun like a lens cover. The hatch in the brain slammed. Abruptly it was dark night, on the land and in the sky. In the night sky was a tiny ring of light. For the hole where the sun belongs is very small. Just a thin ring of light marked its place. There was no sound. The eyes dried, the arteries drained, the lungs hushed. There was no world… Our minds were light-years distant, forgetful of almost everything Only an extraordinary act of will could recall to us our former, living selves and our contexts in matter and time. We had, it seems, loved the planet and loved our lives, but could no longer remember the way of them. The light was wrong. In the sky was something that should not be there. In the black sky was a ring of light. It was a thin ring, an old, thin silver wedding band, an old, worn ring. It was an old wedding band in the sky, or a morsel of bone. There were stars. It was over.
-Annie Dillard, Total Eclipse
I remember in college taking an essay class: Creative Nonfiction. I was hooked. Joan Didion, Sarah Suleri, Virginia Woolf, M.F.K Fisher, and so many others were all around me. Like little comfort word blankets.
I carried my now tattered copy of "The Art of the Personal Essay" by Philip Lopate, that giant ass book, everywhere that year. I took it to parties, to the beach, to the college taverns, and in my small bed, I would start to unravel the ways you could bring someone along with you in your tiny life in this wild, big world.
I know I read Annie Dillard’s "Total Eclipse" sometime that year, and it blew my mind then, but it has really taken me on a ride in 2024 as I am a different human now, hurtling through space with burdens and wounds, and more wonder now than when a child, maybe. I mean, I knew it was going to be about her experience in the totality of the total eclipse in 1970, but I had to stop several times and go back and read sentences over and over the first time. It was fucking deep. I would print out essays and mail them to the boys or hand them out in bars. Who does that? I really did.
I reread her essay this week, and I bet if someone saw me reading it in the café at work, I am sure my face was scrunched up, and I may have looked frightened. I was frightened, and I was still enthralled and deeply moved by the work. It is a cacophony of emotions. Please go read this essay.
It will always be a favorite. I cannot even believe there is a path of totality in Ohio in the year of our lord 2024. The last total solar eclipse in Ohio happened in 1806, and the next one won't happen until 2099. My sons will be 89-95 years old in 2099. I will be but a speck someplace in space. Held down by nothing. What will the world be like then? Will there be a world still? I can’t breathe when I think of the world where my children roam it completely without me. I can cry on cue.
I spent the good money on the ISO 12312-2 Standard good eclipse viewing glasses for the family. I am not messing with ye olde Amazon. I do not trust my kids to not be like me either. I tried to explain that they are getting the day off school, and it is going to be bonkers. For 4 minutes, 28 seconds.
I am not sure what my diagnosis is, but I am certain I have impulse control issues. I always have struggled. Maybe intrusive thoughts too. My dad is a car guy, and I can remember when I was a kid he would tell me not to look at him welding in the garage. He told me I would go blind. Sometimes I looked. Pretty sparks. Sometimes I could not stop myself and had to throw myself, hurl my body out of the garage and into my 1980s yard. Welding torches can cause flash burns, but I hear your cornea can repair itself in a couple of days because our bodies are magnificent. You can go blind though if you look at the photosphere of the sun. In seconds, you can damage your retina. There is radiation pouring into your eyeballs. The retina feels no pain. You could not even know you are blinding yourself. Because our bodies are terrifying.
I don’t know where Annie Dillard is these days, but I really love her website contact page where it is pretty much saying, "I can’t even." Like, I can’t even get back to you.
Contact (or not)
Like many other writers, I can no longer read, let alone comment on, the many books and manuscripts people send me. I am going to stop even acknowledging them, to my sorrow and the sorrow of many good writers. I’m merely overwhelmed. I can’t help get others’ writing published, not because I’m holding out, but because I don’t know any agents who are taking on new writers or even who handle “literature.” I lay low.
Nor can I write introductions or forwards or provide comments or text or reviews. It’s a matter of time, not of heart. If I answered one-twentieth of the mail, I could neither read nor write, let alone take care of family.
Agent: Rob McQuilkin, LMQ, 27 W. 20th ST , SUITE 305, New York, NY 10011 (212) 352-2055
I lay low. Love that.
I am drawn to Dillard’s writing. I am braver after reading her work. I want to be awake and purposeful more in life. My life. Seeing things. Going deeper. Looking. I don’t know if Annie will be seeing this eclipse, but I like to think of her somewhere on the path of totality, maybe in Maine, looking up and taking it all in again. Arranging letters into words that will crystallize in my mind for years and years.
I like to think that.
ilysm
xo
Amy
As Annie continues her silent retreat among the breezes off Massachusetts Bay this signals that a re-read of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is due.