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I looked into the heart of the sun. I saw a 360 degree sunset. I saw the mountains of the moon. I saw stars during the day and Venus shining beside the sun and the moon.

A few moments before totality everything got still. The mourning doves and insects went quiet. The light wasn’t like a sunset, it didn’t have that angle to it. It was just grey and ghostly. The high clouds made the light very white and grey, making you feel like you were in a shadow world. 1/2

Joseph Andriano

I can barely explain what I experienced during totality. It was far more emotional that I realized to stand in the shadow of the moon and stare up like that, looking at the sun. I wandered around in a daze, looking at everything.

Afterwards I felt hungover, confused. I still do.

I’ve read about how people say total solar eclipses are life altering. I never knew why.

Now I do.

2/2

@JosephAndriano
In a field in central Oregon in 2017, I waited along with dozens of other people.

For just a few moments, the whole world came into focus, in relief. Like the moment after a camera flashes.

I felt the temperature drop 20 degrees, and for just a moment, all these impossibly distant celestial bodies were suddenly real to my life in a way they weren't before

The whole world was suddenly real

I noticed the sun starting to peak out, and I shouted to everyone around, "glasses on!"

@JosephAndriano
And then it was over.

I didn't have anywhere to be, no pressing matters to return to.

Instead of joining all the traffic fleeing the suddenly unremarkable lands, I sat there for a bit with my partner.

That field, that partner, the car I drove there in, they're all long distant parts of my past.

That feeling of reality, of the world at once coming into focus through paradoxical distance and quiet, that's a feeling I still search for.

I've only found it a few times.

@katanova This this a thousand times this. We were staying at the place I rent during the legislative session so there was no need to go anywhere. We got to experience it from start to finish. We all just wandered around after totality in a daze.

@katanova That is lovely. What an experience. I can totally see why people chase them now.

Also, I was also the glasses on person in my group!

@JosephAndriano
Thanks!

That feeling you describe, having felt it there, and in other places, I've concluded that it's the feeling of confluence, of many distant parts coming together and feeling it immensely in my bones.

The feeling of the sun aligned with the earth and moon.

My life aligning with people that were exactly who I needed in a moment I needed them.

Of helping bring together someone who needs help with someone who is in the perfect place to help them.

[Cont]

@JosephAndriano
I hope you find more of your own confluences, and find yourself in the places of perfect alignment to make your own.

@JosephAndriano @katanova I was the person who shouted "oh shit!" when the totality started in my group. What an experience!

@JosephAndriano I don't remember my last total eclipse (I was just a kid then) but I do remember a partial one not so long ago and how eerie it felt - the light changing, the temperature dropping. And the funny shapes projected onto the ground.

Edit: These kinds of shapes. hachyderm.io/@tsdower/11223743

Cyanotype postcard in progress,  pinhole sun images in crescent shape mid-eclipse
Hachyderm.iots dower (@tsdower@hachyderm.io)Attached: 1 image The eclipse pinhole #cyanotype on old postcard paper wasn't going to turn out but I had to try: