Partial Eclipse of the Heart
I hurried along the street, head down, eyes down, the horror of losing my sight by simply looking up at the sky, the sun – the most essential awesome presence that breathes life into our universe - was magnetically drawing my attention.
Don’t look up, don’t look up, don’t look up. Get inside. Somewhere. Anywhere. But how do you do that when you have no home?
Once upon I time I was falling in love. I had a home then. I walked with purpose. I didn’t scuttle around then.
I pushed on. I stuck my earbuds into my ears and Sophie Rayworth’s BBC voice funnelled into my head. Live at the big domey building at Greenwich that the British decreed to be the beginning of time.
Earphones – for an eclipse. My own paranoia, the lack of trust I had in myself, made me laugh. Momentarily. Then cry. Missing out on a once in a generation event was no laughing matter.
My eyes were fixed on the chewing gum encrusted pavement as the awesome orb was described by Rayworth’s trusted, jewel-in-the-crown, safe pair of non-paedophile hands were my proxy.
That’s where I should have been. Crowds were flocking to Didcot in a carpark. Didcot. Really? I wondered if that was the Civic Hall where her mother had had her retirement party.
More crowds on Hengistbury Head in Dorset prepared, forewarned, forearmed, forever and always in the right place and the right time with the right equipment. Without fear.
I stumbled past crushed cans, vape packets, sunglasses pulled on tightly, although I know they were an inadequate line of defence against the real and present, magical, danger in the sky.
My eyes flicked from left to right, trying to find a sanctuary.
Don’t look up, don’t look up, sunglasses are no good. Where’s the colander when you need it? In storage. With all the other things she didn’t want. We were together 28 years. We had three. One metal one from her grandma, a plastic one from Ikea that split and the one from the plastic shop on the Roman Road.
Don’t look up. Don’t turn around, bright eyes. Don’t look up. Don’t look up.
I could feel the light change like someone had pumped dry ice onto the film set of a street – it must have started. The temptation to take part and be present was strong but my fear of being blinded was stronger. Anxiety, a lack of bravery and belief that had wrapped around me the moment she walked out stealing yet another life experience in the from me.
Blindness or wonder?
Irreparable damage or fleeting joy?
The dark end of the binary, the big black blob in my soul eclipsing my life, my heart, my experience, my joy and ability to be the person I knew deep inside was somewhere in me.
I crossed the road and back and back again, even contemplated walking backwards trying to reassure myself that every now and then we all fall apart.
And then I saw the woman out of corner of my downcast eyes. Her smile lighting up the stoop she was sitting on. “It’s so cool isn’t it,” she said. “Would you like to borrow my glasses and have a look?”
Yes. Yes. Yes, I bloody would.