Victoria had told me about Novoslobodskaya Metro station, her favourite of all of these works of indulgent art and wealth; created by Stalin to show how prosperous and happy communist Russia was. So the only issue with my plan to visit a bunch of the more opulent ones is navigating the metro system itself. Acquiring some Metro tokens is no real problem; holding up ten fingers gets you the ten trip pass. The real challenge for anyone who doesn’t read Russian is to find where you’re going. If you can’t read Cyrillic letters at the very least, you are doomed to spend a phenomenal amount of time lost and confused, hoping that someone passing by will speak English and help you. Or worse, you are condemned to spend your time following around tour guides getting the diluted official version of the place. Thankfully my preparation worked fantastically (for once) and I found the whole Metro system incredibly cheap, efficient and easy to use.
Entering any station you notice at the bottom of every escalator that there is a middle aged woman sitting in a tiny booth looking eternally up the moving stairs. I’m not entirely sure why they are there, perhaps to take action if something breaks or watch for people causing trouble. However, I think this must be one of the most demoralising and soul destroying jobs I’ve ever encountered. They don’t even get to talk to anyone, just sit staring at the escalators as everybody else moves past them, leaving them as a little island of loneliness in the city.
Novoslobodskaya Metro ‘Dude, we can really put the O in Moscow now’
In any case, there is no way anyone can do justice to the Moscow Metro stations in words. I had seen pictures of them before, which prompted my afternoon’s plans, but in real life they are much more overwhelmingly sumptuous. I feel like I’ve accidentally stumbled into someone’s mansion and I keep expecting a butler to appear and usher me quietly outside lest the police become involved. Novoslobodskaya isn’t at the top of the list in every guidebook; but it should be. I have to agree with Victoria, the stained glass windows give it a different and nicer feel to the other more famous stations. Visiting Moscow without spending an afternoon exploring these glorious stations would be like visiting Egypt and not bothering to see the pyramids.
 
On leaving Kievskaya station I decide I should try to acquire my ticket to get to St Petersburg next week. Victoria had told me about a business centre where they spoke English and written down what I wanted in Russian for me. However, there is nothing you can do that will prepare you for your journey into the world of the Russian train ticket window women. The ticket windows are manned solely by disinterested middle aged women who clearly feel that talking to people who want tickets is something akin to removing leeches from their groinal region. It’s something you have to do for your own good, but the experience is largely distasteful and slightly painful. It takes twenty minutes of essentially circling the buildings and diving into every door to finally find the ‘Бизнес центр’ (business centre) sign, tucked away to the left of one of the entrances. The queue is short, only a few people. Filled with optimism I approach the counter and ask, in Russian, if she speaks English. She simply replies ‘Nyet’. I ask if anyone speaks English, looking at the other women serving and receive another emphatic ‘Nyet’. She looks at me like I’m a particularly troublesome leech she can’t quite disengage from feeding on her valuable blood. I begin to wonder if the training for this job largely involves standing in one of those booths at the bottom of the escalators for twenty years; building up the kind of hateful resentment required to provide the correct service level. I show her the note that Victoria had written for me. I point at the sentence saying ‘Mozhna’, which means ‘Can I?” or “Is it possible?”. She looks at it and then gives me an exasperated look putting her hands in the air and rolling her eyes. I say goodbye and wander towards an information desk I’d seen that had English signs on it.
Whilst the two men there are trying to be as helpful as they can, the older man speaks no English and the younger man speaks about as much English as I speak Russian. So we establish we’re all fine, it’s a sunny day and Moscow is a beautiful city. I then ask, in English,
“Is there anyone here that speaks English to help me buy a ticket?” After finally understanding the question, he shakes his head and says, in Russian,
“I don’t know”. I stare at him, the floor, the wall and the ceiling for a minute before bidding him farewell and wander into the general purpose ticket window area. Perhaps one of the women here will speak English for some reason and I just have to find the right window. I stand in the middle of the area for a while looking at all the windows trying to decide who looks the most like they speak English, before realising this is another exercise in pointlessness. If the women in the business centre don’t speak any English, why would someone in the normal windows be any different?
So with this in mind, I start walking up to friendly looking strangers and ask, in Russian, if they speak any English. I have no idea how many people I ask that question, but it becomes a strange game for me. I start picking people based on the colour of their shoes. Then I only choose young people for a while, then only old people. Then I start choosing young, beautiful Russian women and realise I’m getting distracted from the task at hand. I check the time and discover I’ve just spent an hour in one of Moscow’s busiest Metro stations without making a single step of progress to acquiring a ticket. I need a new strategy. I realise I have an ace up my sleeve, so I send an SMS to another local couchsurfer I’ve been talking to online begging him for help. Nikolai calls me back with laughter in his voice asking me,
“Are you seriously trying to deal with the ticket window women in a station?”
“Well, I thought I’d make some attempt. I’ve got the train I want written down in Russian on a piece of paper here.”
“They are bad enough when you’re Russian!! Real Soviet days service from the women who have done only this job their whole life. I will be near Red Square at five. Come and meet me there at the statue of the guy on horseback and I’ll arrange it for you”.
I already know that statue, so I thank him profusely and vow to buy him some drinks at the earliest possible occasion.
“You know there’s a Couchsurfing meetup at Krisis Zhanre on Friday night? ..it’s a live music bar the local Couchsurfers are normally visit then”, he tells me.
“Yar, I saw that on the forum, I’ll definitely be there!…and see you soon”, I reply happily. When I meet him he manages in a few minutes with a couple of questions what I couldn’t manage in one frustrating hour. He does take me to an agent in the street rather than a window in a train station. Apparently this is the trick to avoid queues and get better service. I hand over my passport details and money to the ticket woman and the deal is done.
I meander my way slowly back to my hotel, wondering if the Trans-Siberian train tickets have arrived; I told the agency to send all of them to my hotel today. I, and my two friends who will join me in St Petersburg, all ordered them online to guarantee we get the trains we want during the very busy summer season. As I approach the counter I feel the first pangs of worry as they search and discover that the tickets are conspicuously absent from the hotel. I immediately jump on the closest computer and send an email asking the agency what they’re doing. We still have almost two weeks before we actually need them, but I start trying to think what I’ll say to my friends….
“Yeah funny thing about the tickets….you know how we spent all that money to get them in advance to guarantee seats? Well it turns out the guy has no address and doesn’t feel like giving us any tickets….or our money….no please put down the knife, I’m still going to need my kidneys…oh really? You can sell one? Okay then…take the left one, I never liked it as much”.
I return to my room and watch Russian pop music for a while before I turn it off and slide into an uneasy sleep filled with dreams of kidneys competing for prizes on a reality TV show.
The young woman is sobbing to herself when I notice her at a table in the busy restaurant I’m sitting in. The staff are carefully avoiding her as best they can. She doesn’t seem to notice anyone anyway, adrift on an endless ocean of despair. I could just wander off and assume she’s broken up with a boyfriend or broken a nail, but something makes me quietly turn around and ask what’s wrong. She stares at me from an infinite distance, her eyes getting redder by the minute. Her face would be quite pretty if it wasn’t contorted into such a heartbroken grimace.
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why do you care what’s wrong? Why should you bother? I’m not worth it, trust me.”
“I don’t know. Do you think I should know?”
She pauses for a few moments, then returns to staring at some point far beneath the floor. I figure I may as well move opposite her and wait to see if she’s ready to talk yet. She looks at me with a mixture of anger, sadness and fear.
“You got the hots for crying girls? Is that it? You like ‘em sad so you can get them to do anything?”
I just let it roll past me and rest my head on one hand and wait a while before speaking again.
“So is it a boy you’re upset about?”
“No! Yes.. well maybe a bit, but It’s always a boy isn’t it? Fucking up my life then walking away.”
“Yes, we’re all bastards who exist only to make your life more miserable.”
I must say it with the right level of sarcasm because she smiles involuntarily before letting her face droop in misery again.
“Fuck you too”, she adds after a while.
“Is that an offer? I mean you are pretty cute, but I prefer women with a smile.”
My evil smile tells her how I mean it and something breaks inside her. She explains her tale of woe, how the world has conspired against her, taken any chance of happiness away. She’d been travelling with some guy she met in Prague, they’ve had a messy couple of weeks followed by a hysterically bad breakup involving plenty of screaming and the destruction of her laptop at his hands. Then stolen baggage on the last train means she has nothing left in the world but a passport. She managed to get her parents to wire some money, but still doesn’t want to go home.
“What’s the point of it? I’ve been cursed somehow. Whatever I touch turns to shit. Why bother?”
“So you’re cursed you think?”
“What? Yeah… it feels like that.”
She keeps staring at me, trying to figure out what I want from her.
“Well…who would want to curse you?”
“My ex probably”, she says with a sad smile.
“So if he’s cursed you, what will you do about it?”
“I don’t believe in that crap.”
“Well, plenty of people do.”
“True”
“So what will you do about it?”
“About the curse? I don’t believe it really, I was just saying it felt like that.”
“Well maybe if it feels like it, then it’s real enough.”
“Umm… What? You think I need a voodoo witchdoctor now? Where am I going to find one of them at this time of night dammit? …. Probably wouldn’t work for me anyway.”
“Well…when I was in Tibet I saw this ritual in a small town there that apparently will clean off bad karma…or curses…or was it bad spirits? .. same thing I think.”
She looks at me strangely again, considering the possibility.
“So… what do you need to do for it?”, she asks quietly, filled with new curiousity.
“Well… just stand up.. and grab this napkin.”
She stands up entirely unsure of what’s going on, but grabs the napkin and stares at it.
“What am I meant to do with this, put it on my head?”, she asks whilst doing so.
“If you like. But really we need to set that on fire, so we’d better just step into this smoking area first.”
She considers that for a moment and looks at me sideways again. I gesture towards the area and start moving. She follows slowly, filled with cynicism and doubt.
“Okay, now what you first have to do is gather the bad spirits to the napkin.”
“How do I do that?”
“Just turn your hands towards the sky and make a bowl with the napkin in the middle. Now turn clockwise….no clockwise…which way do clocks turn where you come from?”
She shrugs and smiles with the mistake but turns slowly holding the napkin cupped in her hands.
“Now picture the curse draining out of you and into the bowl. Think of every part of the evil and let it all run into the bowl.”
She continues turning for a minute as her faces changes through expressions of sadness, anger, misery, hate and despair. She stops turning with tears in her eyes staring at the bowl, then a few teardrops fall onto the napkin.
“That’s it!”, I exclaim.
“Now shake the napkin out onto the ground, let it all fall away from you and back to the earth.”
She shakes it furiously as I spark up the lighter in my hand.
“Now let the flame finish the job.”
She holds the napkin over the flame until it catches and burns with a slow flame. She watches it being consumed slowly and holds it until a tiny fragment remains. She throws it into an ashtray and watches the final piece burn away to ashes. I can feel her mood changing, lifting. She looks at at me sideways again.
“Why does that feel so much better?”
“I don’t know, but it does, doesn’t it?”
I watch her consider it and feel her mood lighten again.
“It’s done…if there was a curse, it’s not on me now.”
“Yup… you’re free to live your life again.”
“So what’s your name?”, she asks me as an announcement sounds above us.
“Does it matter?”, I ask with a broad smile.
“That’s my flight, I’ve got to get to the gate before they leave without me”, I add.
“So you’re already leaving me.”
“You don’t need me, you don’t even want me. You just did all that for yourself.”
“I did?”
“I didn’t see anybody else spinning around there.”
“True.”
She seems to understand something as her mood keeps getting lighter.
“Now you’ve started every hour will get easier. In a week you’ll be laughing at how upset you were.”
“I’ll…I don’t know..but what am I going….?…”
“If you don’t want to go home, go somewhere you’ve always wanted to visit. Then you just have to decide where.”
“Maybe Vietnam.”
I give her a huge hug, lifting her off the ground and setting her back down gently.
“Have fun there”, I say over my shoulder with a wicked smile as I start walking to the gate.
“I’ll meet you at the big cow outside Moo-Moo”, Victoria tells me over the phone.
I amble my way back to the bovine statue and it makes me smile again. She will be my first couchsurfing host in Russia, but that will happen in a few days. Today she has volunteered to show me some of the city. I don’t know how to best describe the bundle of focussed energy we call Victoria. Beautiful Eurasian looks, black hair and a cheeky smile is a good start.
“Welcome to Russia!” she exclaims happily. She has a wonderful Russian accent on her flawless English and a vibrant energy that never dulls. I think if she wasn’t doing something at any given moment it’s possible her heart would stop; which would be a terrible waste of such a warm one.
“What do you have in mind for today?”, she asks brightly.
“I’ve just been wandering in Arbat, drinking in the feeling of the streets, the people, the signs, the smells of the city….”
I look around me again slowly; absorbing the place.
“Okay, Davai davai”, she exclaims, then walks off along the paved street.
‘Davai’ generally means ‘let’s go’ and is a great word to motivate people to move.
“We’ll walk this way and I’ll show you some of the good places.”
We start walking and almost immediately she points out a small stand on the side of the street that looks like its selling beer from a single tap.
“Have you had kvas yet?”
“Oh no…I’ve read about it..is it like beer?”
“Not really and not much alcohol in it at all, it’s sweeter. You should get some later”, she advises as we walk towards the centre of the city.
She leads me past a small pavement shop that has a huge sign promising audio and video goods, but is actually selling hotdogs and chips. I smile and notice more fully the ever present small shops on the pavements of most streets. They are effectively self contained rooms the size of a small caravan with a tiny window in one side for the occupant to sell a variety of products to anyone passing by. Normally it’s all about snack food and soft drinks, beer and cigarettes. So when you need a beer to carry you through a long walk, or a lemonade to brighten your morning, you only have to stop for a moment.
On the way to Red Square we pass a gold hypermarket that a number of spruikers are advertising and she points at it with disdain.
“It is cheap, but not very good and not much gold in anything.”
We walk alongside the wall of the Kremlin for a while and then through Alexander Gardens.
“When they first planted out huge flower gardens like these around Moscow in the nineties, everyone picked them all on a nightly basis. Nobody expected they would stay for long, so they made the most of it. It took years and a lot of guards before people left them alone.”
We round a corner past a huge statue of some guy on a horse to be greeted by the twin towers of the resurrection gate to Red Square. There is a huge bronze disc on the ground that Victoria says marks the zero point of the Russian highway system. There are people standing in the middle of it throwing coins behind them.
“If you stand there and throw come coins away behind you while you make a wish it will come true”, she advises me.
The gates house the Iberian chapel and an important Russian Orthodox religious icon within it. It is this icon that holds the wish-granting power. I look at the long line of people all waiting for their chance to be in the centre of the disc and decide I’m not very interested in queuing, so we pass through the gateway arches and into Red Square.
It is a vast, open expanse of ancient cobblestoned parade ground, punctuated around its edges by iconic Russian buildings. We’re strolling past Lenin’s tomb, then looking at the ГУМ (pronounced ‘goom’) department store and checking the time in the clock face of the Saviour’s tower as we walk down one side of the Kremlin walls towards the amazingly colourful and exuberant onion domes of St Basil’s cathedral. It is a showcase and museum of Russian history and architecture. A part of Moscow life for five hundred years, it has hosted markets and celebrations, witnessed invasions and reclamations and been the location of official pronouncements of the Tsars and soviet officials. Russia’s first public library and university had their homes around this square and the Great Patriotic War (World War Two) started and finished here for Russia with a military parade. My previous memories and experience of this spot mostly involve seeing video of the May 9th Victory Day military parades. These are the ones featuring a vast array of military posturing overseen by dour looking officials in thick coats and furry hats. This is probably why my first reaction to the place is,
“Hmmm…I was expecting something bigger”.
Transcending the initial disappointment of a child’s impressions melting away doesn’t take long. I’m also completely failing to listen properly to Victoria’s calm voice telling me about the place. The domes of St Basil’s really have me captured now. The rainbow of colours across the domes has always struck me as pointlessly excessive in exactly the way I love. Seeing them first hand makes me smile like a little boy given his first crayons. However, what I had never appreciated so much before is the different textures of the domes. Each one has its own style and running your eyes across them feels like a strange kind of massage. I find myself following the spiral swirl of the green and gold one thinking it would make a great brand of Australian soft serve ice-cream. The green and red one with raised pyramids across its surface would make a phenomenal back scratcher, whilst the raised yellow diamonds between the green lines of another would make a great massage tool. Perhaps the blue and white smooth curved one in the middle could be fitted with a small motor and used by lonely Russian women to provide happiness during the long winter nights.
St Basil’s Home entertainment centre
She leads me into ГУМ with a warm smile, saying we have to look at this one shop. The interior of the section we’re in is laid out like a series of market stalls. She leads me to one of the stands, at the corner of which are large conical glass containers, suspended in the air by metal stands and filled with fruit juice.
“One of my strongest and happiest memories of childhood was coming to shops like this with my mother, getting a glass of juice and then moving on through the day. It wasn’t an opportunity to stop, just a brief pause for refreshment whilst passing through”, she explains.
Then she pauses to look at me quizzically, wondering if I’m really listening. I think I’m still largely absorbing this curious new world.
“How do I get a glass?…and what kinds are there? Do you want one?”, I ask, suddenly wanting to share that experience.
“No, I’m fine but you should get one”.
She darts over to another counter to buy a ticket from a bored looking girl standing there. She returns and soon another bored girl is pouring a paper cup of this sweet blackberry syrup for my delectation. It is indeed, cold, sweet and refreshing and makes an interesting counterpoint to the coffee shop we arrive at a few minutes later.
My first real test on reading a Russian menu is a rollercoaster ride of comprehension. I can understand the choice of coffee on offer as most are the same Italian words we use in English, but spelled with Russian letters. However, I can’t make the word for cappuccino appear before me and ask her,
“Is there cappuccino here?”
She frowns and points to it.
“Do you need everything translated?”
The moment she points at it, I read it perfectly and wonder how I missed it. I explain how I spent eight months beating my head against the wall of the Russian language and had got as far as reading newspaper articles with the heavy assistance of a dictionary and some grammar notes – and a lot of time. She works teaching English and Russian to private students, so understands me well.
We drift out and back towards Arbatskaya, then stop suddenly in the street as she points up to a second floor balcony that is filled with classic bird nest boxes. Apparently the owner is a bit of a Moscow icon for having these pigeon boxes, each one hand painted with small dots. An old man sits calmly on a milk crate on the balcony with his side to the street and glances down at us briefly. I leave Victoria near where we met at the crazy cow and wonder how to best engage the Russian capital.
I walk into a mobile phone store to get myself a Russian SIM card and someone asks me what I want, in Russian. I suddenly understand how different written and spoken language truly is; all the time I’ve spent learning written Russian is useless now. Maybe I’m tired, I just spent forty hours awake getting here from Australia, but even then I know that I never really practised speaking and feel like a complete idiot. I fall back to asking in English for a SIM card and the guy turns to the woman working next to him to see if she would like this customer. We have a faltering three-way conversation during which I manage to sign away my life with my passport number to acquire a card that I’m assured will work in every city I’m going to visit across Russia. As I’m leaving the shop to return to my meanderings on Old Arbat street here in central Moscow, I become aware that something is terribly wrong.
In Russian, that’s pronounced ‘Moo Moo’
This is a franchise Russian fast food joint.
My experiment back at my hotel on combining Russian, English and continental brekafasts is causing political turmoil in my stomach. I think the continental breakfast has surrendered, but thrown in a processed meat hand grenade for the rest to deal with. This probably doesn’t mix well with the sausage and egg English assault who are negotiating with the Russian blini for the return of the cheese it’s sheltering. None of this is going back the way it came in though. No, some dissident bacon has opened the back door and is determined to lead a revolt. I know I have about five minutes to find a toilet or suffer terribly. My hotel is still fairly close, and I decide that making it back there is the best option. Why I don’t just head into McDonalds, I don’t know; but it does always feel like entering a temple to the worst kind of soul destroying denizen from the nine hells.
I do, however, make it back to my room just in time and I’m greatly relieved. I return much more happily to my wanderings up Old Arbat street. I notice a sign that looks like a snake drinking a martini. For a moment I think they must have some wild club inside that serves wildlife oriented cocktails. Maybe they have shows involving women and snakes and a drunken pig in a fishtank underneath the bar. Perhaps for a fee you can get photos with the pig.. or the women…maybe both, who can tell what these crazy Russians are into. Imagine my surprise and disappointment when I read the Russian writing next to it to reveal it’s just a pharmacy. If you visit Moscow and find that club with the fishtank, by the way, please let me know where it is so I can visit and claim my free drinks for the idea.
I would like a fishtank for my pig please.
This is the week that changed my life and this is the story of the moment of seeing my first Total Solar Eclipse. This is where and when I decided I would travel to see more of them. I’ve seen four now.
——
The wind whips the orange dust into a constant abrasive stream flowing endlessly and in flurries across the whole plain. The dust permeates everything, but after the first day everyone accepts that it is the new natural order. It can pass through shuttered tents, you feel it could pass through metal walls. It always leaves a fine powder across everything that acts as a constant reminder that you have chosen to live in the Australian desert for a week.
We must be mad.
There are showers on the site, but they achieve nothing in the constant wind. The moment you step out of them you are covered in the orange dust that buries itself in your skin. It will be more than a week before it is all washed away and it becomes a kind of badge back in the city; you know your eclipse brothers and sisters from their burnt, orange skin. Over this time we have all commented on a new found admiration for the Arabs who have lived with the desert for so long. A Swissman reminds me of “In’sh’allah”, “God willing”. All plans are made subject to this, to balance the arrogance that humans have in the face of the power of the natural world.
All reservations are lost when you are moving around the site. So many smiles, so many people speaking a myriad of languages; clothes, customs, cultures swirling together into a global humanity. The eclipse chasers have come from around the world and driven for a day or more outside the closest Australian cities to gather together to share the experience of a Total Solar Eclipse. There is a trance music festival happening here in the wilderness to celebrate the occasion properly and the music…..the music is omnipresent. It started at sunset on the first day with an opening ceremony where the local aboriginal people of the Flinders ranges here in South Australia welcomed us to the land. It has been running twenty-four hours a day since then. A clear wall of sound delivered from a tremendous sound system on the main stage and one less than half the size sitting in the middle of the open marketplace that forms the hub of the site. It is unlike anything I’ve heard anywhere before. It is psychedelic trance, electronic music, and it fits the desert background as though it was always meant to be there. Everywhere you go in the camp you can hear one of the main systems or one of the smaller ones that start up around the sea of tents at all hours of the day and night.
One afternoon I’m playing my Djembe along with the tunes one of our crew is putting on our own sound system. I’m part of a group on a twenty-four seater bus that has driven two days from Melbourne to be here. Our driver has setup a four thousand watt system he is powering from a combination of wind and solar power generators he has brought along. So our camp site is a village hub in our part of the greater camping grounds where about four thousand of my new best friends from around the world have come to live together for a week. About four Japanese men approach us holding small Djembes of their own and ask to join us, we welcome them to sit and we start to play rhythms together. We take turns in leading a new rhythm that matches the music our DJ is mixing for us and enjoy laughs and drinks together as we learn from each other’s styles. After a few hours they decide to move off towards the main stage and thank us. This is the first time I realise that they can’t speak a word of English and I can’t speak Japanese. And yet we’ve just been talking happily in music for hours.
At night, the crystal clear skies allow a view of the cosmos generally unseen and unknown. With small binoculars you can see the curvature of the new moon. That in itself is almost a revelation. At sunrise and sunset you can see the sun angling through the sky, even being bent by the earth’s atmosphere. It was a dark moon when we arrived, and each day sees slightly more light. You can spend hours lying on your back looking up into the infinite.
And we do.
There are no clouds, no city lights, no hindrances. And the beauty of nature is overwhelming. Even a long way from the sound systems, the night winds deliver bursts of music to you….first from one stage, then another. Late at night a third stage starts up and runs to sunrise. The music drifts in surges across the plain as though someone is opening and closing a door. You fall asleep with it and awake to more.
The music stopped.
This can only mean one thing. The eclipse is about to begin. The music gives way to the sounds of thousands of people making their way to higher ground to await the moment of Totality. The anticipation and excitement fills the air, bubbling to the surface in waves. It is impossible to resist…..waves of whooping and screaming in joy pass up and down the thousands of people lined along the ridge in the middle of the plain. With the naked eye, the sun is still too bright to look at. Through the eclipse glasses you can clearly see the shadow on the sun. Slowly creeping to cover it.
We stand and talk meaningless words.
Prepare for the moment.
Be ready to get a photo during totality.
Pass a spliff.
Check the sun again.
I am filled with a new profound respect for the sun. Even with most of its face covered the light hasn’t changed. You still cannot look at it. Then in the last minutes before Totality it begins to get dark. A cold wind starts up. The light changes quickly as though sunset approaches. Sunset really is approaching, but for now the moment is imminent; at any second the black sun will open its eye to us.
The transition is almost instantaneous. I am looking at the black sun in absolute awe. I cannot hear anything. People are excited, they must be making noise but I cannot hear anything. I have the photo taken of me with the eclipse in the background. I take one in return and then stand again motionless. I cannot hear anything. The red of the corona is….unique.
I think I should look around at the darkened sky. I cannot move, transfixed into a timeless moment. ‘Like a reset for the brain’ the swissman said.
I understand that now.
In this moment a hardened nihilistic cynic sees the soul of the universe. How can you stuff that feeling into the sausage machine of language? How long has this moment lasted?
The transition is sudden and without warning. I feel like something has just been taken away from me. Something I wanted. Needed. My eyes hurt and I turn away. There is screaming and whooping, hugging, celebration of life, existence. Sound returns and we are alive. It continues. Sunset is only half an hour away.
We sit and watch and talk meaningless talk.
The music starts again, slowly, timorously at first, but building back into thunderous glory. The sun sets with only half its face showing. Half of the sky is a rich twilight blue and the other half is black already.
The only thing I feel sure of anymore is my vow that I will see the next Totality I can.
I will travel wherever I must.
In’sh’allah.
 That's the Eclipse next to my shoulder
 Half a sunset...notice it's dark on one side..the sun is still eclipsed..
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