the annular and the anulled

 
much onslaught of strange weather these days- particularly rain, for which we are not known.

also, all kinds of strange astronomical and astrological opinions regarding the future. maybe these recent divinations have forced their way into conversation with regards to last night's annular eclipse  which was the first such eclipse since 1994 and the last of such, visible by those of us in North America, until June of 2021.

not having a head for the astronomical science of all of this (but of course being partial to the diagrams involved:)

i prepared to view the eclipse with all the necessary tools...

 and waited...

by the way the above is a pinhole camera- a very very basic one. (so basic in fact as to be comprised as j crew suiting cardboards...) that allow a small shaft of light to mimic the eclipse via projection. the pinhole camera was not a method for viewing or capturing the eclipse itself and took a little finagling...

 

that little prick and dance of light was the best we could hope for, a very primal gadget. and just as we honed in on the exact science...clouds eclipsed the sun for us. bust!

by the time it was possible to view it, the horizon had swallowed up entertainment for the evening. it seemed a little anticlimactic, until we saw...

!!!

those are usually flat, even, circular shadows projected by the aspen trees. somehow those parings of light, hooked and knitted across the walls were what floored me about being momentarily blocked from the sun. it wasn't the maniacal emotion i anticipated would wring everyone's faces of blood and sharpness, or the fact that a fleeting lapse in light is enough to throw off balance all living things, it was the fact that there is a huge abyss, a system of headless, endless night whose mathematical ellipses evade all our sensitive instruments. what could have prepared us for these shards of shadow. how can so much depend on on the blunt and practical darkness that an illuminated object leaves in its wake? apparently a great deal. but. mercifully there are no answers to dull these sharp existential questions. there was only light that seemed, somehow wrong, despite the sun being behind the mountains, and there were the bent lightbeams attesting to the small and humble efforts of humanity. and somehow that was more than enough.