Eclipse Flips

Like many things in life, I fell into the eclipse by accident.

Okay, it was only a partial, but still. . .   a twice in a hundred years unique alignment of sun and moon. . . .

The event caught me by surprise; even the park in which I happened upon it managed to provide a kind of unexpected, magical setting-  it juts out over some rocks along the Long Island Sound and is quite picturesque. I had gone there to stroll and gaze, not thinking about any imminent or unusual lunar movements.

The mood was festive when we arrived and something clearly was up.

I approached a family sitting on a bench wearing those silly sci-fi eclipse goggles redolent of 1950's thrillers about aliens and asked, “When?”

“Now!” they said. “We have an extra pair, here!”

And that was it, we had joined the party.

We took the glasses and wandered up the rocks toward the water to a warm, stone bench; in front of us the anchored sailboats were bobbing on small, dark blue waves.

Sharing the lone pair of eyeball protectors back and forth, we looked up into the void and experienced that ooooh/aaaaah sensation of the floating cosmos while people nearby chatted and giggled. Strangers looked at each other with warmth and curiosity. It was a communal happening of clear importance, and everyone looking appropriately awe struck.

Like others who viewed this phenomenon, I too wanted to feel I’d gotten something incredible out of it. The darkness of the universe, the intense gold of the blinding orb- blocked only in part by a slice of deep moon- like a chunk of the most velvety of chocolate cake, the illusion of something downright mystical.

The tiny waves moving on the water and we mortals awash in the glory of it all, checking out a heavenly mystery first hand. It was like a medieval illumination, virtual style, or perhaps a glimpse into infinity. It beat cable news, hands down.

My store of metaphorical fancies ran amok. A flat, somber sky over gray-green water, the invisible screen moving in and shedding of a pale a shadow over what had just been a sunny afternoon as the eclipse slid by, a snowy blue horizon fading to pastel; the wind coming up as a grand finale to this first rate cosmic show. My thoughts continued along such untamed paths of wild and willful poesy.

Then my neck started to ache so I turned my attention back to solid land and looked around. Not wanting to feel like an uninvolved nihilist or astronomical pessimist while the rest of the world seemed to be aiming their smart phones ever so smartly up, up, up at the galaxy, I too needed to capture the image, albeit with my trusty, exceptionally junky, though new, flip phone (please try to hold those snickers). And the little devil came through!  It made that slow clicking sound that signifies yes!

The only problem is that now I cannot seem to transfer the once in a hundred years phenomenon, as seen through my particular, simple, very personal lens, to any other device on the planet Earth because I can't get it out of the phone.

It seems the new flip model is even cheesier than the crappy old one. I’ve since searched online, consulted with strangers and eventually called the store. Apparently the current replacement is so cheaply made it can only take miniscule pictures that will remain locked into its tiny soul, maybe forever, never to be shared or seen on a normal size monitor, unless perhaps you unearth some secret code or get amazingly lucky. But if I “come in,” the disembodied voice on the store phone said, they might be able to “help out.”

Hmmm. The Rosetta stone of keeping flip phone customers happy until eventually they can phase us out? The supposed “upgrade” to something crazily more expensive? Not over my flipping flip phone!

So why did I post this? Reading it over, I have to admit that a simple vignette about a small, plastic piece of outmoded tech may lack the irony of an O'Henry story or the magnetic attraction, wide audience appeal, and ubiquitous cultural references of "A Game of Thrones" (whatever that may be);  but now I'm  kinda' seeing the whole episode as possible fuel for a quirky, lovable indie, a film with one of those compelling, single word titles: Reactionary! 

Well, okay, maybe not. . . . people are so proprietary- dare I say addicted?- so positively chauvinistic about their smart phones they have completely closed their minds to the subject of alternatives, like the possibility of using an uncomplicated flip phone for example, perhaps as a means of holding back time as tech marches idiotically on, and worlds continue to near collide.

The eclipse thus eclipsed by daily digital life, a too fetid imagination and a flair for intense stubbornness about keeping up with the Tech Joneses, I still needed to recapture the image- my very own personal take on a star studded happening for which you did not even need a telescope, now locked down inside a dinosaur of a "device" (can we even call it that??)- and so I began steeling myself for another trip to the flip store. . . . 

How was your eclipse? Can I see your pictures?