The morning of the eclipse, buzzards circled overhead when I left the house. They were possibly back to finish off an opossum that they'd started in a neighbor's yard the day before, but they added a note of doom to the proceedings. I arrived at work in an unsettled state of mind because on my commute , I had found myself alone in a car with two young men at the opposite end of the train who entertained themselves on one of the many long stops in the tunnel between stations on the stop-and-go ride in by projecting small hard balls of some kind at me with such force that they whizzed as they passed and cracked when they met a surface. By the time we got to the next station, their boredom had become so great they had depleted their arsenal, somehow without landing a single shot. But they'd left a mark.
The disturbing start of the day colored my mood, probably contributed to my decision to forgo a rooftop eclipse watching party sponsored by the building management even though I had gone to the trouble of procuring and bringing from home the dark protective eyewear recommended by the experts for safe viewing*. I was concentrating on a project that was giving me some trouble and toyed with the idea of settling for what I could observe through the window which included an eclectic vista of the surrounding environs-- a neighborhood in transition-- but did not include the events involving the moon and the sun. As the time of peak eclipse approached, I suddenly noticed that things had quieted to an unusual deadness in my corner of the building and I found myself more and more drawn to the view outside the window. I had protective glasses. Things were happening out there. I went out on the street to be part of it.
The afternoon light was strange. The atmosphere was electric. People wandered in an almost stupefied state of heightened one-ness with the sky, and at the same time dislocation from time and place. Not everyone was preoccupied with the motion of planets, satellites and stars. Someone in a crowd of men leaning against the side of an old liquor store was hollering what sounded like, "Hey, Grandma!" so loud and with such little effect that I started to wonder if he was talking to me. When I reached the corner, I turned. At the edge of Chinatown, a gray-haired woman with a swollen lip walking toward me was staring at me so intently I almost walked past her, but her question to anyone who would listen surprised me.
"Where's the eclip'?" she said. "Where's the eclip'?"
"'Where' is the eclipse?" I asked, trying to confirm the category of the question.
"Where's the eclip'?"
"In the sky," I said.
"What's the eclip'?"
"'What' is it?" I asked, confused by the sequence of her line of questioning.
"What is it?"
"The moon is passing right in front of the sun. It's blocking it."
Her eyes widened. The journalist in her knew what came next. "When is that going to happen?"
"It's happening right now. It will be at peak in about 5 minutes. Don't look at it!" I said. "Not without these."
I took out my protective glasses and held them toward her.
She was suddenly no longer interested in eclipses.
"You're handsome," she said.
'She's already blind,' I thought.
"Listen," she said. "I just moved out of a shelter after 9 years. I'm in a place with my grandkids now. I don't know how we're going to make it."
My face must have registered the disappointment I was feeling at suddenly finding myself in the middle of a pitch, because the talk became more emotional. I don't know what I was expecting. I was thrown off balance by events in the heavens.
"I go to church. I know the lord will help me. I'm a good woman. I kicked the drugs. But it's hard. I can't even afford toilet paper for my grandkids. They use newspaper to wipe themselves. I can't buy a loaf of bread."
I had already made up my mind I was going to break my usual rule and give her money. I started for my wallet.
"This morning, I sold my body for money," she said. She looked to be in her early 60s at least.
"Will $5 help?" I asked.
"Make it $6," she said.
She watched closely as I peeled the 2 bills from my wallet.
"One more." she said.
I obliged. Blame it on celestial events.
"God bless you," she said and went on her way.
A few more steps down the sidewalk I found an unoccupied expanse of wall. When I left my office I wasn't sure I'd even find a comfort level for wearing space goggles in public, but the sun-drenched vacancy beckoned to me. I positioned myself out of the flow of traffic, and turned toward the main attraction in the sky. The transaction just conducted was fresh on my mind. I had to admire the up-to-the-minute topicality of the hook. But the story she told me... These were the kind of vivid details that make or break a pitch. I tried to imagine the desperation that would make me say such things to a stranger on the street, true or not. But was it desperation? Or was it practice? Did it matter? I donned my glasses and looked up at the sun. It was within a minute of peak eclipse. There in the eerily darkened afternoon sky was the moon, leaving just a thin crescent of penumbra uncovered. I could hear someone loudly asking a companion, "What's he looking at?" A gentleman wearing a tie and a short sleeved shirt asked me directly in softly accented English how he could see the eclipse. I handed him my glasses. A few minutes after peak eclipse, I made my way back to my office through Chinatown pausing only to document the occasion with a photograph of the celestial events playing out in the pinhole dapples of light from a tree on the sidewalk bricks in front of an old synagogue.
When I got back to work, people were already starting to filter back down to their desks from the rooftop. A few blocks away, with protective sunglasses still in his hand, a celebrity dumbass was pointing and staring at the sun.
Dozens of eclipses
~~~~~~~~~~
* Why didn't I think to put them on when I was being used for target practice on the train?
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