Eclipsing

a writing prompt + April Writing Hour

Welcome to Writing in Company. Each week I share some words and a writing prompt, meant to be jumping-off points for you to write about what matters. Use the prompts however you like—to journal, to draft thoughts for your own writing project, as meditation or prayer ideas, or for another creative endeavor. You can always look back through the archive for more ideas. Grab your pen and paper, and let your words loose on the page.

Like many in the US, I spent time outside on Monday, gazing sunward, during the solar eclipse. In my part of North Carolina, we had about 85% totality—enough to notice the temperature drop, the light around us dim, and the birds get confused. Eclipse glasses, a homemade pinhole viewer, a paper plate shield, and a kitchen colander all contributed to our viewing pleasure, and to the funny waves we got from drivers who passed as my husband and I camped in our driveway. Apart from one neighbor walking his dog and carrying his glasses, we didn’t see a single other person on our street outside. I’m hoping they were all at a park somewhere, and didn’t just skip the eclipse. It’s not often that something happens so singular and so shared.

In 2017, we drove with our daughter to the next state over to see totality. And it was totally worth it. For those few minutes, when the moon covered the sun, the tiny eclipse-happy town stopped. It seemed like the whole world stopped with it. Strangers, families, neighbors—we all stood in our little patches of grass and gazed up into the cosmos together, quiet after the initial gasps and cheers. We were motionless, as the motion of the universe stunned and silenced us.

panorama photo credit to Dan Hester, from 2017

The writer Helen Macdonald, said about that same eclipse:

And then the revelation came. It wasn’t what I’d expected. It wasn’t focused up there in the sky, but down here with us all, as the crowds that lined the Atlantic shore raised cameras to commemorate totality, and as they flashed, a wave of particulate light crashed along the dark beach and flooded across to the other side of the bay, making the whole coast a glittering field of stars. Each fugitive point of light was a different person. I laughed out loud. I’d wanted a solitary revelation but had been given something else instead: an overwhelming sense of community, and of what it is made — a host of individual lights shining briefly against oncoming darkness.

and

I’m tiny and huge all at once, as lonely and singular as I’ve ever felt, and as merged and part of a crowd as it is possible to be. It is a shared, intensely private experience. But there are no human words fit to express all this. Opposites? Yes! Let’s conjure big binary oppositions and grand narratives, break everything and mend it at the same moment. Sun and moon. Darkness and light. Sea and land, breath and no breath, life, death. A total eclipse makes history laughable, makes you feel both precious and disposable, makes the inclinations of the world incomprehensible.

—Helen Macdonald¹

a writing prompt

Write about your own experience of an eclipse, even if you haven’t seen totality in person.

Or, write about a time when you felt both alone and connected, a small part of a huge glittering universe.

April Writing Hour - Saturday, April 27 | 4-5 pm Eastern

My next live writing hour on Zoom for paid subscribers is in a few weeks. If you want to write in company with others, you are welcome to join in. You can upgrade your subscription for a month ($7) just to try it. A separate email to paid subscribers will go out with the link, or you can find it on my Substack tab called Writing Hours. Let’s be brave and write together.

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photo credit to Dan Hester, from 2017

1. Read more from Macdonald’s essay, and other eclipse thoughts at The Marginalian: https://www.themarginalian.org/2020/09/15/helen-macdonald-vesper-flights-eclipse/