Writer's Block - Solar Eclipse
Jul. 22nd, 2009 12:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
essayel[Error: unknown template qotd]
I've only once been in a total solar eclipse and I can understand how people who didn't know what was happening might freak out about it.
At the time we were in France and kept an eye on the time and pulled the car onto a verge and went and stood in the middle of a field. The light was very peculiar - metallic copper then steely then leaden - and it suddenly grew cold - aaaaaaaaaand darkness at noon! We could hear cattle bellowing and dogs barking for maybe ten seconds then a long waiting silence. Of course one couldn't let that go on for too long because the kids were getting rattled. So I sang 2 quick jokey lines of 'Oh God Our Help In Ages Past ..' and we laughed and let the silence back in again. And then - oh wow, it still makes me fill up a bit - a lone blackbird tuned up, and a robin answered and then the larks and we had a whole other morning chorus, a command performance just for the sun, and for us since we were there. It sounded very much like this!
We stayed in the field until it was light again and I'm so glad that it was just the 4 of us and we weren't in a town or at the beach where people were, I understand, shouting and blowing car horns and letting off firecrackers. I feel privileged to have stood in silence listening to the world take a breath.
And it's useful for when I want to write about it too!!
Speaking of which, I have slacked a bit on the Border Ballads fic I'm posting on![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
hyssop_and_rue since I first mentioned it, but there are new bits now and about 21 hundred words so far.
I've only once been in a total solar eclipse and I can understand how people who didn't know what was happening might freak out about it.
At the time we were in France and kept an eye on the time and pulled the car onto a verge and went and stood in the middle of a field. The light was very peculiar - metallic copper then steely then leaden - and it suddenly grew cold - aaaaaaaaaand darkness at noon! We could hear cattle bellowing and dogs barking for maybe ten seconds then a long waiting silence. Of course one couldn't let that go on for too long because the kids were getting rattled. So I sang 2 quick jokey lines of 'Oh God Our Help In Ages Past ..' and we laughed and let the silence back in again. And then - oh wow, it still makes me fill up a bit - a lone blackbird tuned up, and a robin answered and then the larks and we had a whole other morning chorus, a command performance just for the sun, and for us since we were there. It sounded very much like this!
We stayed in the field until it was light again and I'm so glad that it was just the 4 of us and we weren't in a town or at the beach where people were, I understand, shouting and blowing car horns and letting off firecrackers. I feel privileged to have stood in silence listening to the world take a breath.
And it's useful for when I want to write about it too!!
Speaking of which, I have slacked a bit on the Border Ballads fic I'm posting on
hyssop_and_rue since I first mentioned it, but there are new bits now and about 21 hundred words so far.![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2009-07-22 01:22 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-07-22 03:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-07-23 08:45 am (UTC)The one thing I remember about the famous solar eclipse of 1999 is that I did not notice anything. Apart from the fact that it was only partial in Northern Germany, anyway, the sky was so overcast and cloudy that it did not matter at all if the sun was or wasn't shining. A friend phoned me shortly after the eclipse was supposed to have happened: "Did you see anything? I didn't." Neither did I. Not even strange animal behaviour or the like.