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I was thinking that I should have taken a photo last weekend when the four of us were watching the annual Ducks/Beavers matchup (formerly known as the Civil War game but both colleges recently agreed to stop calling it that so now it’s the game everyone still thinks of as the Civil War but is referenced awkwardly in the newspaper). There we were, after all, sitting together and doing a thing, or at least 3 of us were properly attuned to the gameplay while I repeatedly said things like “Whoah what just happened?” because I don’t understand shit about football except that I enjoy the part right before the snap where one dude in the back just, like, darts around like a dog with zoomies?

Our family photos have really dwindled, I don’t put the effort into it like I used to. The kids tend towards an extreme dislike of having their pictures taken, I mean most of the time if they even catch me aiming a lens in their direction they react as though I have betrayed their deepest trust, which is an exhausting emotional journey to embark upon for a quickie capture.

On the one hand I find this intensely irritating; on the other, I can’t say that I don’t understand. I personally need an enormous amount of preparation before being photographed and even then it kind of feels like getting a tooth pulled in that the moment itself is highly unpleasant and there is a LOT of relief afterwards.

I’ve been backing off from hovering-documentarian mode, but I miss it. I miss when the taking of pictures wasn’t so complicated, I miss the pictures themselves. There’s nothing like aging to drive home the power of images and their ability to bring back memories.

I read something recently about how there are people who chase eclipses. They travel around the world in search of solar eclipses, which apparently happen 2-4 times per year. There’s even a name for this: umbraphile, or shadow lover. (Shadow lover sounds MUCH more exotic and interesting than umbraphile, I must say.)

This seems like such a weirdly specific thing to be into, but I kind of get it. Oregon had a total solar eclipse in 2017 and it was like nothing I’d ever experienced before. There was this strangely intense moment when the sun was fully covered: a liminal state of being, day but not-day. It got surprisingly cold and the crickets started singing, it felt like the whole world was being rebooted. In a way, it reminded me of the time I was in a small plane flying around the Seattle area and startled by the perspective of Mt. Rainier’s enormous looming presence. Like, you humans think you’re in charge of everything, and yet.

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