It’s Eclipse Day…
And the skies over Austin, Texas are as cloudy as the space between my ears after having stayed up far too late discussing the awe-inspiring event that a close friend and I were witness to last night at Waterloo Park.
Leading up to the Eclipse my newsfeed was inundated with advertisements and posts for different gatherings created to commemorate this celestial occasion. Whereas I had been a calmly excited spectator in the making, I felt my anxiety and FOMO grow with each new post and advert. Everything was so similar in what it offered. I was struck with decision paralysis. All I knew is that I wanted to celebrate this, somehow.
Then I received an email in my inbox from Waterloo Greenway about their “In The Path of Totality” events. At this point we were said to be expecting tourists in the range of 500k-1mil in our city, so I had very little interest in venturing out on the day of.
“The Universe in Verse,” immediately caught my eye. This event was created and hosted by Maria Popova, a writer in all forms (poet, author, essayist). The Marginalian describes it as, “An annual charitable celebration of the wonder of reality through stories of science winged with poetry.”
Science? And Poetry? The speed with which I purchased tickets is usually reserved for concert pre-sales.
Finally, I could relax… until the day of when the buzz of excitement started back up.
The tickets were sold on an honor system: pay what you can. At the venue, Moody Amphitheater, there was a food vendor, cocktails and mocktails at their bar, clean, indoor bathrooms, and a table selling patches and books from the various poets who were being read from that evening.
Outdoor food and drink were not allowed, a minor detail that I had forgotten in my eagerness to be thematic with galaxy Oreos and Sun Chips. I figured the Sun Chips would be sacrificed, but the Oreos were jammed under the shirt of my friend unnecessarily, since security gave us the “okay” as long as I dumped my water bottle out (there were refill stations).
We got a good chuckle out of it.
There was plenty of seating, we had a row practically to ourselves since many attendees opted for the green lawn, and who could blame them? Springtime in Waterloo Park is awe inspiring. Curated native plants bloomed, giving the air a soft, sweet smell, as we enjoyed the light breeze and balmy sunset.
It’s not often that I am lucky enough to have the opportunity to be witness to something this beautiful. “The Universe in Verse” was curated so perfectly, blending astronomical history and science with live music and poetry.
We were serenaded separately by saxophone, guitar, and piano. Our breaths were held fast by words written by minds still present and minds long turned over to the cosmos, spoken by someone else entirely.
One of the musicians, Stephon Alexander, used the flight of sandhill cranes behind powerlines as his sheet music.
Tears pricked the corners of our eyes as we listened to a voice tell the story of his Eclipse-marked wedding day, leading into a poem that was accompanied by an animated short film. This was the pinnacle of the evening for me, as I fell into the words:
“Right this minute, people are making plans, making promises and poems, while at the center of our galaxy a black hole with the mass of four billion suns screams its open-mouth kiss of oblivion.” (Watch here at the 1:51:30 mark.)
Today, it may be cloudy in Austin, Texas, like the space between my ears. Today we may be graced with a glimpse of the corona, or we may only experience darkness and watch street lights, confused, flicker on around us.
But that yawning expanse above, the roaring Sun, our orphaned Moon, they will dance. And we will breathe beneath them.
