I Am Banished (Part One)

I Am Banished (Part One)

 

Early in the reign of Ronald the First, my manifold crimes caused me to be banished from Utopia by my Uncle Who Was a Failure.

 

And please understand that this was not done lightly. There was substantial conversation about it as venom, and accusation, and hysteria, and many quotes (relevant, or not) from the Bible flowed through the telephones.

 

All leading to a stern, final, exasperated decision that I be sent as far away as I could go in the world, and still be among my own blood.

 

To my Uncle Who Was a Success (a professor in England), for as long as he could stand me.

 

This is how I happened to arrive in the English countryside: thinking that I would make that place too hot to hold me, as well  -  thinking that my career of random vandalism would roll merrily on  -  not suspecting that I would find myself in a place that made my career as a criminal, and a seriously antisocial element, seem foolish and empty.

 

That first year with the animals, the fog, the rain, my eccentric tutors, and my new fascination with the sky seems as good a place as any to begin.

 

So that’s where I am beginning: as I sit here, putting these memories to paper at a desk in a place on the other side of the world from England  -  and almost as far as my current home  -  a desert where there are measuring stations that have never known rain. Where there might be earth that has never tasted moisture.

 

There is a mineral trace, a taste like salt, on our lips from time to time  -  and each breath is a reminder of how arid a place can be.

 

Our photographic equipment is resting in the lee of a small ridge, a few miles from the town of San Pedro de Atacama, in Chile. Not far away from that we also have our tents, and our cars.

 

By climbing to the top of the ridge we can get a clear view all the way across the salt flat, to the highway on the other side.

 

It is a little more than three weeks until Christmas  -  summertime in the most desiccated part of the world  -  and a little more than two hours from an event that, a thousand years ago, would have thrown San Pedro, and just about everywhere else in the world, into uncontrolled panic and despair.

 

Priests would have gone to their knees.

 

Offerings would have been brought to idols.

 

Virgins sacrificed. Maybe.

 

The end of the world announced. Definitely.

 

Only in some places (China and Egypt, in particular), would the ancient astronomers have known what was happening. And only because they kept such complete records of celestial events.

 

They would have known that a total eclipse of the sun was due: because that’s what their calculations told them. And they knew that it would be over in a few minutes.

 

They would have been a little worried, like everyone else. But they would have known that there was no need to sacrifice. No need to repent. They would have encouraged everyone to remain calm.

 

These days, such an eclipse is just a curiosity. Something that schoolchildren go outside to see. Something that makes its way into popular songs.

 

And just part of the job, for some of us.

 

We know to the hour, minute, and second when the searing face of the sun will start to deform.

 

A pure black disk will begin to creep in from the edge of the shapeless brilliance we are accustomed to  -  and will start to close off the light: the nuclear overflow that makes all earthly life possible.

 

After a while, this intruding shape covers the sun completely. A perfect fit. Without warning, and without mercy, relentlessly converting day into night.

 

It’s impressive. Even for someone who’s seen a lot of them.

 

But it doesn’t stay in place that long. Just enough time for chanting priests to send up a holler  -  or for someone to have their heart ripped out as a desperate sacrifice  -  and then the featureless black disk majestically moves on.

 

Leaving the world with some dead virgins (if virgins were part of the anti-eclipse program), or marking a call to penance, or imprinting the power of an immortal God.

 

In our modern wisdom, we’ve created charts to predict eclipses hundreds of years in the future. Both total, and partial. So we know where we need to be. And when we need to be there.

 

On this particular occasion, we’ve also brought hundreds of pounds of lenses, and other hardware, up from Santiago  -  the airport we use when flying from the States to the Southern Hemisphere.

 

The Southern Hemisphere, this time, because it’s where this eclipse can be fully seen.

 

And this desert: where the time between cloudy days is measured in years.

 

No chance of a rain out in this neighborhood. It’s the driest place on Earth, and close to being the emptiest. The air here is the cleanest and clearest anywhere. The only problem is the heat: which tortures any equipment that uses electronic chips.

 

(As Thor has told me:  - Chips don’t like it hot. Chips like it cold. - )

 

Thor is the technician on this trip (he’s been with me the past two) and  -  as I write this inside my tent  -  he’s double and triple checking the cameras, scopes, and external hard drives that will absorb the pictures that I, and other solar astronomers like me, will earn our living talking about, and arguing about, in the near future.

 

For us, it’s not the end of the world. It’s a kind of beginning.

 

A chance to make a visual record of something beautiful, and rare. And our fame, our academic papers, and our careers depend on seeing what we need to see in just those few minutes of darkness.

 

Since the next total eclipse of the sun won’t be for six years.

 

Thor is out there. I should be out there, too. In the razor-edged sunlight.

 

But I know he can handle the job, and I’ve wanted, for so long, to write something like this  -  something like what I’m trying to bring myself to write now  -  that I’ve come back to the tent, zipped up the flaps, and slapped a legal pad on the desk.

 

I’ll be taking cover behind these fabric walls, anyway, as the eclipse begins, so there’s no harm in beginning early.

 

Something you need to know  -  first of all  -  is that I can’t be outside of the tent when it’s dark. Even if I know that it’s just going to be a few minutes.

 

Unreasonable fear of darkness (nyctophobia) isn’t a problem that I’ve always had. It’s just started to appear the last few years.

 

And it might not even be that unreasonable. It’s not a fear that’s beyond explanation. I know exactly why I can’t tolerate the absence of light.

 

I stop, from time to time, to listen to the wind scratching against the walls of the tent. Wind noise is constant in this place. Scratching and scraping that goes on twenty-four hours a day.

 

But now I’m going back to England, and  -  even though I know I’m not in the green pastures and mists of that place  -  I can still see it all so vividly that it’s alarming. I remember the house growing larger, as I return in the afternoon, aboard the most majestic of horses. I remember how the table things were set for tea. I can taste the pepper that Kelly loaded into the saucepans with a shovel.

 

And, of course, I remember our dying Hope: lanquid in his web of memories  -  his repulsive little collection in his repulsive little empire  -  and I still hear his voice (like sandpaper, or the scratching of the wind against canvas).

 

The relationship I had with him is not the only relationship I want to talk about, but it’s one that I wish I could have handled better. I brought him peace, in the end. But  -  as you’ll see  -  I ended up paying quite a price for my decision.

 

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