With My Own Eyes

Arthur C. Clarke, in his novel “Imperial Earth,” describes a type of people he calls a “tapeworm”.

Tapeworms, his principal character Duncan Makenzie points out, are typically Earth-dwellers who believe their lives are so important or significant they record themselves, both audio and visual, saying and doing every little bitty thing that happens to them. Day and night. He credits this to narcissism and the ubiquity of portable recording devices.

Sounds familiar, right? Never mind that Clarke’s novel was published in the mid-1970s, when such ubiquity wasn’t.

That brings me to the point of this post: The eclipse.

I’m dead certain there will be millions of photos and videos of the event, published everywhere, probably to the point sites like YouTube and Facebook will break down the day of.

So I want to watch the eclipse unrecorded. Using only the eclipse glasses I bought.

Because I’ve got lots of pictures and video of the places I’ve visited. And I never look at it.

Like Linus, I wish to gaze upon this Great Pumpkin with my own eyes.