14.11.12

drawing in the light of the present moment ...






I'm still tingling all over...

It is not every day that a total Solar Eclipse tracks right over your house; but today we won the natural phenomena lottery...

The alarm went off at 5am. After days of debate as to where one can best go to see an event that has overwhelmed our region with national and international visitors, it was hard, even as a local, to know where one was best to be.  Yesterday afternoon I arrived at the contented epiphany that the place I really wanted to be was home.

Well, five hundred meters from home to be precise - our chosen location to experience Totality was the Gordonvale Golf Course at the end of our street.  We headed out at dawn, two sleepy children in the pram, with picnic rug, coffees and snacks hoping that the forecast poor weather would hold off.  Moments later, picnic rug set out we found we had a perfect [almost entirely] uninterrupted view east of the eclipse - flanked by the stunning silhouette of Djarragun/Welshes Pyramid and the vermillion glow of flowering poincianas.  It was the dream location and it was entirely ours; with the exception of one jockey training a horse, and the caretaker of the golf course.  GOLD!!!

One of the most magical memories I have of my childhood is of watching an eclipse with my father in the backyard of our home in Victoria when I was little more than a toddler.  Being the 70's, it was a 'lo-fi' era - and rather than watching the eclipse through glasses special made for the occasion, we used a simple pinhole in a piece of card that projected the path of the moon onto paper held by my father's hands...

This morning I was ready to go 'hi-fi' with four pairs of 'Totality Appoved' glasses ready to position on the eager eyes of myself and my loved ones. However, in my pre-dawn excitement I forgot to pack the aforementioned spectacles into the pram - and although we realised with plenty of time to dash [those five hundred meters] home, nostaligia happily won out as we four delighted in the magic of observing this phemonenal and beautiful event using the most basic of tools - a pinhole though a piece of paper...

It was one of the moments I will cherish as a parent; my daughter Dante standing naked in the pre-Totality twilight holding our pinhole veiwfinder in her hands as she learnt out how to correctly position it to see the path of the eclipse:

'Do you know what you are looking at Dante?'
'Yes - that is the Sun mumma;
And the moon!'

Then Totality.  To experience this in such isolation was incredible.  The dawn chorus - only just completed, now seemed to be playing in reverse. Then silence and darkness and cold ...

Rumi wept at the strangeness of it all.
Dante noted 'mumma, it's sleeping time again...'

Darkness and silence - and the soft voice of my father guiding me and for a moment I was as a child; though his words were quickly overwhelmed by the re-commencement of Drongos, Friar Birds, Starlings, Fig Birds and a rather baffled Kookaburra...

A few days ago a dear friend of mine posted on facebook a fabulous picture of a rainbow ending right on top of her house.  In 'comments' friends hoped she 'found the gold' - I offered that the rainbow was actually a reminder of the 'gold' she already has in her family.  And, further again, thinking today on chasing rainbows and eclipses -  seeing the incredible delight that today's events have brought to so many unfolding online - these artful performances of light and life are golden themselves - precious, ephemeral, perfectly unobtainable

they are the ultimate 'present moment' ...


















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