20. Shadows

Shadows

The shadow moves more rapidly than I expect, the dark line of false twilight advancing towards us across the fields like ink moving through water. We stand next to our car on the deserted road, waiting for it to reach us so we can remove the special glasses shielding our eyes from the flaming crescent of the sun that still rims the black moon disc.

I drop to the ground, lying on my back on the pavement. Now in totality, the air cools but I feel the warmth of the stored sunlight radiating up from the surface into my body. Although most birds are silent, roosters crow in confusion and a mosquito buzzes by my ear. The disc above is no longer the sun but a black hole in the indigo sky, a hole framed by a flaring halo of gray-blue light that pulses outward.

Even though I understand the science behind what I am witnessing, I am awed and tearful, as a familiar sky turns foreign. The Aztecs felt fear as Cortez made good his promise to take away their sun. I know mine will return but it has burned an image in my memory and humbled me.

On a road just south of Mazatlan, July 11, 1991

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