Stalking My Memories

It’s just after the height of the local eclipse as I’m starting to write this. We only got somewhere between 60-70% occlusion here, but there’s something altogether uncanny about it. It was high 80s (F), with middling to light cloud cover all afternoon, and we’ve been watching the turkeys amble around the back yard, while hummingbirds dogfight each other for the feeders.

I took the laptop outside with me about half an hour beforehand, and Mom brought her pinhole pieces of paper (eclipse glasses? Not ‘round ‘ere, thank you kindly). It’s humid, and a little still – not the wind, there’s a light breeze, but that hush to the air like you get before storms. Only that’s not quite right.

Then it’s like cloud cover rolled in, that storm-what’s-not kicking in. You can see that the cloud cover isn’t any denser, but things are darkening in a way that’s a bit unsettling. It starts to physically cool down enough that I stop being quite so concerned that my poor laptop is going to overheat in direct sunlight. The pinhole starts to show more of a crescent shape than a circle.

And it gets darker. It’s evening rushing in too quickly, settling in far too fast. The humidity and breeze seem to spike, not because they do but because the air is getting a bit more chill. It’s not quite goosebumps levels of cold, but there’s this mild dizzying sensation because shouldn’t the barometer be falling rapidly for this storm and I can still make out patches of blue among the clouds.

The woods seem a little too still – not hushed, but like most of it doesn’t know if it’s evening somehow early or Something Other. The hummingbirds don’t give any shits, and they continue their little cackles at each other at they get their food.

At its height, the best analogue I have is a storm. That moment when the sky is bruised purple-gray, the humidity is thick enough to drag at your limbs even though you’re on land, not in water – but it’s nothing like that. It’s too dark too quickly. There’s that chill enough to raise hackles but not goosebumps. The humidity seems kinder than it was earlier, without its partner heat breathing down your neck.

It’s gorgeous, and disturbing, and somehow my mind is immediately latching on to Jedha obscured by Super Star Destroyers, or how Alderaan must have witnessed the Death Star coming out of hyperspace.

The heat sneaking back in to join the humidity makes everything a bit clammy. There’s enough cloud cover to trick my mind about the light coming back. ‘Just a cloudy day, an Odd Moment,’ it’s declaring, but it’s not and something other than my brain is more than convinced that it wasn’t Just A Bit Odd.

This was Other.

This was magnificent.