Today's Eclipse and Eclipse Art

I aspire to the Buddhist notion that we fill our days with distractions from the reality. However, reality itself is elusive, so the deeper we dig, the less we seem to know.

Einstein and other physicists speak of the mathematical beauty which underlies the universe. What is beautiful about the math, they say, is the simplicity. This total solar eclipse is a reminder of that very concept. We have a day in which to observe that the moon appears to be the same size as the sun. This illusion is because the sun is 400 times wider than the moon and the sun is also 400 times farther away from us as the moon.

How beautiful and how simple is that?

If you are lucky enough to see the eclipse in totality today, you will be living "in the moment" for just a while. In today's busy world, perhaps it takes a total eclipse in order for us to do that. With planetary light pollution, too few people glimpse the moon and stars much at all anymore. Even our modern astronomers sit indoors to view that which telescopes from across the globe are pinpointing. On this day we are all drawn to the actual non-virtual sky above us, just as those ever-fewer numbers of us who work the land have always done and have always been connected with.

The wonder of today's event is a perfect break from the day to day bickering and drama that the news headlines bring. We are a small part of this cosmos, this ever expanding evolving universe, and, we know and understand so very little of it. We are humbled.

We'd best turn to the artists for further interpretation, awe, and wonder.