We suggest you step outside around 2 p.m. on Monday afternoon, don some protective eyewear and watch Chicago go dark.
If you demur and choose to keep your head stuck in some digital device, you won’t get another chance to experience this level of solar eclipse, wherein the moon obscures the sun, within American borders for another 20 years.
Chicago won’t get to experience the nirvana of totality Monday, as will a broad swath of U.S. places from Texas to Indiana to Maine, but 94% will be plenty awe-inspiring. Heck, it will be 96% in lucky Kankakee. And if you’re reading this from downstate, the experience should be even better. Cairo, Carbondale and Mount Vernon, among other nearby Illinois communities, all are within the path of totality, and a chilling darkness will descend there for seven or eight minutes.
What will come into your mind? Throughout history, given our existential dependence on sunlight, many have seen eclipses as inauspicious and abnormal events. We get much of our natural order and rhythm from night reliably following day at the appointed time and even a brief deviation long has disconcerted us humans.
“These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no good to us,” says a terrified Gloucester in Shakespeare’s “King Lear,” and the creepy witches in “Macbeth” simmer their nasty cauldron with ingredients that have been “silvered in the moon’s eclipse.” Shudder.
“Once upon a time I was falling in love, now I’m only falling apart,” Bonnie Tyler famously sung. “Nothing I can do, a total eclipse of the heart.”
Powerful symbolism. But no need to look at it that way, of course. We find these natural phenomena great equalizers that tend to have a humbling effect, especially reminding those of us who crave control that much of our illusory power can be blotted out in a moment by forces far bigger than ourselves. Even the mighty CTA buses are expected to pull over.
But, remember, this too shall pass and the light of day will return.
Clouds permitting.
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