total eclipse (and my heart)

I am so in love with the way we as a people get excited about planetary events. The solar eclipse being one of them.

Sure, there will always be people who don't care, but there is something about the camaraderie of finding fascination in the world that touches me. The way I and two of my coworkers took a five minute break from work to go outside, tip our heads back, and watch as the clouds darkened with the eclipse. We couldn't see much of anything, the sun was out of reach behind the blanket of water in the troposphere. But just because we couldn't see it, doesn't mean the event wasn't happening. It was still appreciable.

We took the time to be incredibly present, and I know I will remember this quietly exciting moment for the rest of my life. I remember where I was for the last eclipse in 2017 with vividity, and I will remember this one, too. The way the experiences have shown that the time passes so quickly, that seven years is both short and long, is another thing I love and hate.

We are so small, in the grand scheme of it all.

Sometimes that feels scary, being a blip among the galaxy. Other times, it is soothing. Nothing is really that serious, life goes on (until it doesn't), and all we can do is make the most of it.

memento mori; memento ad astra rugire, audiunt.

quotes on the feeling of the vast

"Things don't have purposes, as if the universe were a machine, where every part has a useful function. What's the function of a galaxy? I don't know if our life has a purpose and I don't see that it matters. What does matter is that we're a part. Like a thread in a cloth or a grass-blade in a field. It is and we are. What we do is like wind blowing on the grass." - Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven

"People had a choice. They could continue wandering through the endless darkness, an absence of everything they loved, an endless void of disappointment and loneliness... Or they could look down, and embrace what they always had and loved." - Jon Bois, 17776

"The universe began as an enormous breath being held. Who knows why, but whatever the reason, I'm glad it did, because I owe my existence to that fact. All my desires and ruminations are no more and no less than eddy currents generated by the gradual exhalation of our universe. And until this great exhalation is finished, my thoughts live on." - Ted Chiang, Exhalation

"NO OTHER PLANET IN OUR SOLAR SYSTEM GETS TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSES!! THE SIZE AND DISTANCE OF OUR MOON FROM EARTH AND THE SUN MAKE THE PERFECT CIRCUMSTANCES TO GET TOTALITY!!! THE EARTH AND MOON ARE SOOOO COOL AND OF COURSE OUR SUN!! I LOVE LIVING ON EARTH I LOVE YOU EARTH I LOVE YOUUUUU MOON I LOVE YOU SUN" - source

"There was a star riding through clouds one night, & I said to the star, 'Consume me.'" - Virginia Woolf, The Waves

"If I grab a bunch of matter, anywhere, and I organize it in exactly the same way, I get… you. You, my friend, are a very complex, awe-inspiring configuration of matter. What you’re made of isn’t really important. Everything in the universe is made of the same thing. You’re a configuration. Your essence, as you call it, is information. It doesn’t matter where the material comes from. Do you think it matters when it comes from?" - Sylvain Neuvel, Waking Gods

"Overhead, the stars were wheeling and infinite, a complicated mobile made by giants. They pulled me amongst them, into space and memories." - Maggie Stiefvater, Forever