Total Eclipse

This piece pissed me off at first. It seemed so contrived, too lyrical, almost mythic. I kept thinking its just an eclipse its just an eclipse its just an eclipse for chrissake! over and over, mental eye-rolls. I respect Annie Dillard very much, but this piece was written from a viewpoint higher than the eclipse she waxes rhapsodic upon. She switches from the reality of the eclipse to overstuffed and wordy philosophical discources and insights and musings about life, history, the eclipse itself and its meaning to humanity. As seriously as she took the eclipse, and how transformative it for her, inversely, this essay did nothing for me. No lasting effect, I did not think about it after I read it. It was just words on the page, it was there while I was reading it. Now Ive finished, and life goes on.