the path of totality

there’s something rather poetic about explaining to someone that you’re driving into the path of totality. way more poetic than just saying you’re driving to cleveland, the road to which is paved with tony packo’s and penn station east coast subs. oh, cleveland. the land. my fatherland, in fact. chosen, as if by god a million billion years ago, as the crossroads where the moon would one day pass fully in front of the sun on april 8th, 2024. chosen too, by the national aeronautics and space administration as nasa village for this once in a lifetime cosmic event.

as jack donaghy once told a lovestruck liz lemon “for god’s sake, lemon. we’d all like to flee to the cleve and club-hop down at the flats and have lunch with little richard, but we fight those urges because we have responsibilities.”

responsibilities? in the face of totality? how do you say, n’thank you. i was fleeing to the cleve, responsibilities be damned, to witness this cosmic miracle with my loving, amazing, and totally not-neurotic-at-all jewish family. it was high time for a visit, for all of us, back to the homeland.

seeking out totality was a strange choice for me as of late. in recent months, i haven’t been able to handle much in the way of extracurricular darkness. what i mean is, i’ve been mired in my own personal totality and as a result, have made painstaking efforts to avoid adding to it by seeing movies, reading books, watching news, that might compound the terror of night.

like eden after eve took that fateful bite, i was living in a fallen world. everywhere i looked, i saw darkness. even in the good things. the loving things. the things i knew once were bringers of light, all i could see was shadow. the dark underbelly of society had shown itself to me, and i couldn’t unsee it. there was no going back. shadow, everywhere. the pain and abjection so many of us are living in. the brutal and transactional nature of life within the material realm. it felt like i’d put on eclipse glasses in the middle of a sunny day, my world turning black, and i couldn’t take them off.

most notably, the darkness i couldn’t manage to unsee was my own shadow. the monstrous corners of my psyche, so neatly tucked away, suddenly brought to the fore. the ugly, calculating, unlovely parts of me that i’d never intended for anyone to see.

once in a lifetime though, your moon may cross in front of your sun. it has nothing to do with you and your plans, and it doesn’t care about your desire to stay in the light. it happens completely outside your control, and all you can do is face totality, and wait for the sun to reemerge. which it will, one day, if you have faith.

as darkness fell over nasa village, people started shouting with confusion and delight. broadcasters reported nocturnal animals coming to life, bats flocking overhead, as if it truly were the middle of the night. it’s hard to capture the experience of totality in words, but believe me. if you were there, in the darkness, you too would’ve instinctively understood the disorienting magic of this celestial anomaly. its tidy way of right sizing us. of putting us and our egos and grand plans back into their rightful place in the universe.

forces outside myself spun me into my own personal totality. i didn’t ask for it, but i didn’t not, either. in certain respects, i acknowledge that i played a role in summoning it. at some point or another in the course of my life, my moon was bound to pass in front of my sun, but i may have sped it along in my rush to become more conscious.

for so long, i yearned to go deeper. go darker. i wanted to be a real writer. a realized person. to experience life. really experience it. to come close to the beasts of addiction and psychosis. to comprehend the nature of darkness and light. the inner workings of the human psyche. i craved understanding. a spiritual experience. i was dissatisfied with the materialist view of the world. i knew that there was more to the world than meets the eye, and i yearned to encounter it. and encounter it, i did. it scared me, when my world fell, and i thought i might never be able to come back to the surface and see the light again.

but it’s not true. totality teaches us that. there’s inevitable darkness, and then, once again, there’s light. you emerge. you can take off those pitch black eclipse glasses, and see the light of day once again. but you never go back to the way things were. not really. you never unsee what you’ve seen in those moments of total darkness. you’re permanently aware of the substructures at work in the background, guiding thoughts and feelings that might seem inexplicable on the surface. you’ve borne witness to the collective unconscious, and there’s no taking back that knowledge.

i’ve been reading a lot lately about psychoanalysis and jungian psychology. the importance of bringing those deep lurking shadows to the fore. confronting those demons. it’ll never really work to push them down. they’re there, and they don’t take kindly to being ignored. they’re a part of all of us. we all have some monsters hiding somewhere in the sketchy recesses and long blighted corners of our pasts. and we all have some light. the capacity to love, to grow, to learn, to teach, to share. to expand. to become more truly who we were meant to be. the key, from what i’ve gleaned, is to live somewhere in the middle. to acknowledge the darkness, and acknowledge the light. serenity hangs in the balance.

since returning from the path of totality, i’ve found myself warmed by the cozy glow of light which follows dark. i’ve wrapped myself in a blanket of positive energy. fallen back into the arms of people i love who authentically love me back. i’ve been guided by the voice of a power greater than myself. soft, gentle, feminine voice, assuring me that i’m on my path. that my need to fall into totality was so profound. that it was a great gift. that it was worth all the pain. the fear of not being able to come back. it was worth the chaos and disillusionment, and hurt. because without the darkness, there would be no appreciation for, no real understanding of, the light. the stars and planets were set in motion billions of years ago, their paths determined by an intelligence well beyond the limits of our all-too-human comprehension. everything that’s happened was going to happen, and will continue to, despite our vain efforts and our little interventions.

i don’t lament my own totality. i am eternally grateful for it, in fact. i asked to know the darkness, and the universe delivered. my world was fallen and it’s been picked back up. its contours and weight changed by the experiences i’ve gone through. and now, finally, i can breathe again. and i’m able to live in both. light and darkness. darkness and light.