Total Eclipse Of The Mind

WWW alumn Laurence Pevsner on chasing solar eclipses, the fallibility of memory, and the value of looking at things only our eyes can see.

By the time you read this, I will be on the west coast of Mexico, hoping to see the sun vanish. The forecast right now is for clouds, which isn’t the kind of disappearance act I’m after. But if we’re lucky enough to get a clear day on April 8, at exactly 9:51:23, I’ll look up as the moon appears to collide with the sun. I’ll spend an hour watching the moon spread its shadow through solar glasses, finally removing them at 11:07:25 when the moment I’ve been waiting for arrives. And then, with naked eyes, despite having witnessed two total solar eclipses before, I don’t know what I’ll see.