Lunar Eclipse in Virgo
Do as the ancients did
and step lightly along the banks of a slithering river and find a perfect stalk. Cut it down, blow out the dusty innards so that it is hollow enough to serve as a breathing tube. When the time comes – and you’ll know it because an eerie shadow will drift across the light that is your entire world, casting everything in bluish-gray and tilting the whole universe off its axis – submerge yourself under the water, holding the stalk firmly in your lips. Inhale and exhale as steadily as you can, peering through the warbly protective film of the slow-drifting river, and silently pray that the life you always knew, which is now suspended in an unknown interruption, will return once the darkened rays have lifted off.
A year ago, I defied them, the ancients, and stared directly at the sun through Amazon-bought eclipse glasses as it was slowly, imperceptibly covered by the shadow of the moon. The kids were excited, sitting on the roof of the car, giggling hysterically as the totality drew nearer. The birds stopped chittering in the trees, and strange half moon shadows dappled the sidewalk. Everything descended into silence and silver. Even though my eyes were open I felt I couldn’t see. During the peak, we went inside, compelled by some unseen pressure to go horizontal. The tops of our heads tingled and we exclaimed that we felt woozy and bizarre, laughing uneasily at the power of it. I tried hard not to make any wishes; not to have any thoughts at all. And then it passed. I waited an hour before I drove the canyon road home, to be sure I didn’t get caught in an accident on the highway caused by the strange tilting light.
That was the month I went to a show and found I could enjoy music again, except lingering memories and impressions kept seeping into my consciousness. It was a time when the past still primarily filtered over the present, like a film of cellophane I was looking through. It was the month I cooked for a friend who had broken her leg. It was the month I went on a dump run with a different friend, chucking ancient detritus into the open maw of earth. It was a time when I didn’t much care where I was so long as I wasn’t sitting still. It was the month I read an article that helped me realize what I was having were panic attacks. The day after I read it, I found myself with my friends and their herd of goats, holding onto flinging limbs while we trimmed and picked shit out of their crusted hooves. I crouched in the pale dry winter grasses, wrestling the small, muscular creatures who were crying frantically at being restrained in such a manner, and I felt better because their wild struggling externalized the feeling I was carrying inside.
There is a lunar eclipse in Virgo in two days and all I can hear in my head is a constant refrain of “She’ll be comin’ round the mountain when she comes.” My friend and I send voice notes back and forth like missives from one continent to another, even though we only live a few miles apart. “See you on the other side,” we say. We wait to understand, calling up familiar adages to help make sense of the impending chaotic, temporary outage of our guiding lights. They say don’t do magic on eclipses. They say be perfectly imperfect. They say fate will have its way with you one way or another so buckle up and go with the flow. I can’t use the word surrender anymore so something else will have to do — seeing hawks perched on telephone poles; my sternum popping lately anytime I pull my shoulders back, as if my heart would like to physically open; the realization that I’m no longer compulsively in movement (although the habit of waiting for the other shoe to drop is a hard one to break).
She’ll be coming round the mountain when she comes.
Step lightly, find a stalk, hollow it out. Breathe.
