Chasing the Eclipse
If things had not gone the way they did, I'd be in Mongolia right now. The eclipse nonsense, and all the hullaballoo surrounding it would be an entire world away. I sincerely wish I were in Mongolia, on a Bactrian camel, but thanks to a feisty horse, my back is broken and I am looking at endless posts about the eclipse. What are my plans? What great Universal shifts will happen?What songs am I going to be singing? What goddesses am I going to be praying to?
Really?
I respect my friends' wishes to participate in such things, but I'm not on board here.
While I am genuinely interested in the scientific aspects of it I would be a liar if I didn't admit that beyond that it just doesn't interest me to end up in endless lines of traffic en route to Wyoming, running out of gas, using beleaguered toilets on the Interstate for about two minutes or so of sky-borne phenomenon. Colorado has already shut down all large truck traffic to reduce the congestion on the major highways, which are expected to have an overabundance of overeager, overstimulated people chasing...whatever.
I dislike crowds, especially those who might well be drunk, expecting something highly unlikely to happen, and then heading home wickedly disappointed. Not people I want to be around. We can expect short tempers and lots of brake lights. Miles of brake lights of the type one sees in Miami, which is populated by people too old to drive, which leads to extreme road rage and a great deal of flinging of canes and walkers and wheel chairs. It already takes three plus hours to get from Cheyenne to Denver, which should be a 90- minute drive. This is going to be epically worse. For many miles in many directions.
Thirty years ago I recall a rather large undertaking that a great many people believed heralded some great massive change in the world. It was called The Harmonic Conversion. Had to do with planetary alignment. Great numbers of people converged on places like Sedona. I don't remember what they were expecting but definitely something along the lines of world peace. Everyone was going to end up in saffron robes, dancing in the park, singing Kumbayah. Or something like that. That was August 16-17, 1987.
It was a monumental flop, nothing happened, and we now have Putin-paid off Republicans and Trump. If ever we needed a Harmonic Conversion, god help me, that would be about now. The problem is, Great Nature doesn't care about the mess that we have created. We're on our own. Just like when we had Hitler and Stalin and all the rest. Really evil operators just keep right on showing up. And nobody is going to swoop in and save us from them.
I am bemused when I hear people make this and that claim about how a predictable, normal activity in the movement of heavenly spheres is somehow going to be a harbinger of some massive shift. Barring an errant meteor, which might indeed result in a mild reworking of our evolution (and ridding ourselves finally of all the Trump DNA in the process, as well as everyone else's, which is probably a very good thing for the Earth in general), Great Nature doesn't give a crap about us. It gives a good shake and we're history. Just like it did with dinosaurs, who probably had just as healthy an opinion about themselves and their self-importance as we do. Tyrannosaurus Rex: "I RULE!!!!!" Great Nature: "Um, no, actually, you don't."
End of conversation.
Earth, and we humans, are not that important. The Cosmos has a great deal of business that simply doesn't include us. Scientists who cannot imagine a cosmos without bipeds argue strenuously that Earthlike worlds HAVE to have human-like creatures. Based on what? Why? Because we think we're that essential. THAT important. THAT special. THAT monumentally influential in the workings of All That Is.
Oh kindly give me a break.
No we're not. Any species that insists on clitoral mutilation, massive wars, torture and genocide in the name of some magical invisible entity named "god" that humans passionately profess to have a law that says Thou Shalt Not Kill, a species that trashes every single environment it enters (from our own bodies to outer space) is not a species worth replicating. The only place where humans have any importance is Hollywood movies. After enough of them, and television programs, Americans are shown to believe in: vampires, extraterrestrial beings, and the tooth fairy. We humans really, really, really want to believe that we're important enough to invade, that aliens want to abduct us, that we're intelligent enough for other species to have a modicum of respect for us.
Peel me a grape. As a species we struggle with self-respect. We're far more committed to killing each other off than we are healing, loving, tending to the poor, feeding, oh you know, those things that our manufactured religions say are so important. Just follow the money. Aliens have nothing to learn from us as a species. We have some spectacular individuals, but we either ignore them until after they've been dead long enough not to threaten us any more, or we assassinate them. And we want something or someone to come "save" us.
An eclipse is just an eclipse. I fear that dipshit will still be in the White House at the end of the arc of this eclipse or any other anywhere else in the massive Cosmos, where many eclipses are happening every day, all the time. Normal, everyday, common, celestial happenstances. Planets move, and they cause shadows. I realize this is difficult for people to grasp but this is basic physics, gravity and science. Not magic, spiritual intervention or Revelations.
In other parts of the Cosmos, far more spectacular events are going on that are more significant than our itty-bitty eclipse. Such as death explosions of massive stars. There are supernovas. Gamma ray bursts- the biggest explosions in the universe, setting loose more energy in a matter of seconds than our sun will release in its entire ten-billion-year lifetime. One of my distant cousins, a very bright scientist named Hubble, has a telescope named after him out there showing us just how much is going on beyond our atmosphere. Turns out, helluva lot. Great Nature pays absolutely no attention to our crystal-worshipping and our eclipse-chasing and solemn, candle-lit gatherings at dawn when the planets align.
Because folks, billions of planets are aligning for billions of other earth-like planets all over the Cosmos. Perhaps some of them have really stupid presidents, too. Harmonic alignments aren't likely to be any more effective there than they were here. Great Nature is remarkably uncaring. If anything, I'm not sure humans would be terribly welcome anywhere in the Cosmos given our propensity for war, littering and genocide for the most vicious of reasons: the need to be right, and the need to feel superior to absolutely every other kind of life. And especially over each other. In fact, my bet is that if there is any kind of Galactic Committee, humans have already been quarantined. Or we damned well should be. I wouldn't want us in my back yard. And I are one. Just saying. I would love to be a fly on the wall at some big committee meeting discussing having the human race be allowed at the table.
It wouldn't be pretty.
Therefore I will stay home, away from the parties and and songs and the prayers to coronas, pretty as they may be. We live on a tiny third rock from an insignificant little star. We have limited time here. If we're lucky, we learn how to love. Care about each other. Act responsibly. If we're lucky. We all have the same shot at learning how to be responsible members of this galaxy as any one else out there.
Others will go right on plotting bomb attacks and hate crimes and church burnings and genocides. Because they need to feel superior and they want to be right about their POV. God is on their side, you see. The poor, ignorant, hateful man's answer to everything when challenged about his reasoning.
When the moon marches across our sun's face, I might or might not be outside. If I'm really, really lucky I might be around some horses, and get a chance to observe their behavior. Otherwise, I might be taking a nap. Having a broken back tends to make you want to sleep. A lot. Great Nature doesn't care about my busted vertebrae. If you stare at the eclipse without protection it will blind you. And it can melt the inside of your precious iPhone. Great Nature doesn't care about that, either.
Just a couple spherical bodies doing their thing high above the atmosphere over a miniscule rock in a tiny solar system in a little corner of a massive Universe. Happens all the time.
It's just another fine day in the Cosmos.