On the Other Side of the Eclipse | Catherine Viel

By Catherine Viel, May 17, 2022

(Golden Age of Gaia)

May 16, 2022

…he says
let’s walk up to the field and catch the sunset,
and off we go, a couple of aging fools.
I hope, he says, on the other side there’s a lot
less work, but just in case I’m bringing tools.
~Maxine Kumin, Chores



It’s the morning after the full moon eclipse in my part of the world, Southern California. Yesterday the sky was peculiar most of the day. Unusual cloud cover, square, flat configurations. Watery lemon-colored sunlight. A waiting feeling, but not with the sense of dread that we feel when it’s earthquake weather.

A family member asked if I thought the sky looked weird, so I know it wasn’t just me. Luckily, all the clouds had vanished by nightfall, and when I wandered over to look for the moon at one point, there it was in the mysterious orange-red glory of its full eclipse.

Today, irrational well-being and a sense of carefreeness, dare I say happiness, seems threaded through my bones and sinews. Are my blood cells happy? Is my body dancing somewhere in another dimension?

Even the people wearing masks outdoors when I went down to the store didn’t register as a black blip on the radar of my brightness.

*****



I know everything changes, moods go up and moods go down. There’s no reason to think that I’ve ratcheted up to a level where it feels I’m unlikely to dip down again to those gloomy Stygian depths of personal hell that I’m sure we all have.

And then again, why shouldn’t that be so? Perhaps eclipses can help us facilitate changes and shifts, releasing old and welcoming new, like a comet shedding dark and gathering light.

If my “new” has managed to drop off a few anchors of the bleak and sorry past, I’m not going to go dredging the depths to find them again. Let them rust peacefully into oblivion and be absorbed back as elemental metals within the transformative core of Earth.

Today it feels as if Earth herself can mitigate and transform the deepest darkness into diamond light, if she so wishes.

*****



The busy-busy part of me wants to know, what should we do with this purposeful energy? A cornucopia of tasks and necessary chores fans out like a tired deck of cards, edges worn and images blurred under grubby fingerprints.

Pick a chore, any chore. It’s better than just sitting and doing nothing. Don’t waste this energy or this time—get something done.

I push back to recline the chair and an involuntary smile ghosts across my face. I feel friendly toward my chores and the tasks I must do. Not combative, not resistant. The equanimity is revelatory. It feels calm and natural, very different from my standard reaction.

So often I feel as if the things-I-must-do are borderline enemies. They’re placed into my drudgery bucket for the express purpose of making me miserable and keeping me from doing something I’d rather do.

Even if that’s doing nothing whatsoever.

*****



I’ve noticed an odd edginess in people I’ve had casual contact with over the last week or so. Store clerks who seem to be barely holding onto civility. Almost a sense of spoiling for an argument.

Or maybe it’s just my perception, or something about me. Whatever it is, it’s an undulating sense of changing that has been going on for a bit of time.

My understanding is that eclipse energy precedes the event and follows the event for quite awhile. Days or weeks. If so, this would be on the far side of the cusp. Just beginning the descent from the high energy of that blood moon eclipse.

Today, skies are clear here in sunny Santa Barbara. A gentle breeze wafts. The light is clear, bright, friendly, not murky or edgy.



On the far side of the eclipse, is there a momentum occurring? Is Earth, are we humans, accelerating toward something? Toward the event so many are anticipating with varying degrees of impatience and vacillating hope?

I think so. I feel so.

Whatever is happening, and will happen, I will clasp what feels like a higher level of personal existence in a warm and loving embrace. If this is fifth dimensional, it is enveloping me like a gentle, glowing fog, with the faintest scent of roses and cinnamon.

I smile again, and stay reclined in the chair. The bucket of chores isn’t going anywhere, and at the moment, neither am I.