Slivers of Light

Enjoy the eclipse.

It sounded like a metaphor, more than half a year into what has seemed to be a descent into darkness. I smiled and opted for a more traditional farewell as I parted ways with an old acquaintance. Have a good day, I told him. 

Maybe it's not a coincidence, the astronomical event to end all astronomical events making its way through our country's heartland tomorrow. For two minutes and 40 seconds tomorrow, not too far south of here, the moon will pass between the earth and the sun and cast a huge shadow of darkness upon us, teasing us with a ghostly sliver of light from the solar corona that we dare not view with the naked eye. And then, back to daylight.

Two minutes and 40 seconds can seem like an eternity, not unlike the seven months and one day since our country was hijacked, seven months and one day of averting our eyes, afraid to stare directly at even the smallest glimmer of light.  We are long past believing the shadow will lift any time soon. We keep our dark glasses on, knowing it's not safe.

Who knows, though, maybe it really isn't a coincidence, this eclipse of 2017, visible in totality only here, in the United States. A swath of temporary blackness bisecting us, reminding us of our eternal flame, stoked all these years by the best intentions, even through periodic blips of hate and indecency, a flame far too powerful to be extinguished.

Maybe, I sometimes think, we needed this eclipse, in the way people sometimes need to hit rock bottom before there's nowhere to go but up. Had 45 and his band of deplorables (and, I refer here not to the desperate folks who were duped by false promises but to the ones who knew better all along but chose, inexplicably, to dance with the devil), been beaten down, many of us would still be in the dark. We would have had no idea what still lurked in the shadows, the thriving underground world of hate and ignorance that has suddenly been invited to remove its hoods. We would still be hearing about Hillary's emails, the root cause of all that is evil.

Maybe, just maybe, the ghostly sliver of light that we dare not view with the naked eye will grow bigger and less lethal, now that the eyes of so many holdouts have been peeled open. We have been forced to reflect, and we may just be ready for some daylight.