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We had some C-Class and M-Class flares last evening and then around 10:37 EDT we had a major X-Class solar flare (X1.7) just off the edge of the east limb of the sun. It caused a strong R3-Level radio blackout on the sunlit side of Earth.

X-Class flares are the largest class of solar flares and we have not had one for quite a long time. This particular flare was not facing Earth and the CME (Coronal Mass Ejection) that it hurled into space will not hit us. Nevertheless, this is some very intense solar activity, and as this flare turns the corner and begins to be apparent from Earth, we may not have heard the last of it.

Of course I am fascinated to look at the government sites and at the various photos, movies, graphs, and data streams detailing this event. Yet I also know to turn my gaze inward and also stare a bit in there at what is going on. The outer and inner should match up, and they usually do. And remember that my take on intense solar activity like flares is that they are a game changer. What does that mean?

I can only tell you what it means to me, and I will give it a shot. Here is my segue into right now, starting with yesterday.

On Sunday we celebrated Mother's Day and the birthday of my daughter May, so starting Friday people streamed in here from Traverse City, Lansing, and Ann Arbor. We had a great time, ate wonderful food, laughed a lot, made a bit of music, and then some of the crew played board games, and so on. Baby Emma was here too.

I went to bed last night with a fairly clear idea in my mind as to where I was headed and even what I would write about today for this blog. I could already feel the words coming together in a meaningful way.

I don't usually dream much, but these last weeks, this eclipse time, I have been dreaming and my dreams last night were rough, one of those reoccurring nightmares where I am trying to dial a number on my cell phone, but can never get all the digits right, and it goes on and on.

Anyway, I woke up this morning, very early (as usual), and it was as if all the threads that were running through my mind last night had just been cut. In other words, I don't see the reason right now for thinking what I was thinking last night. It is as if my line of thought has just run out or, as mentioned already, somebody cut the power.

This is so typical for what happens with an intense solar event like this current flare. Suddenly here I am, back to square one and wondering a bit where (and who) I am and (as Dylan put it) "with no direction known."

Of course, I know that time will fill in the blanks, and that gradually I will come together and discover I am in fact going somewhere, and do have a direction after all, despite appearances.

The comfort of having some linear direction, of making progress, of being headed somewhere is so much a part of my character that is it humorous. I feel naked without it. And, as mentioned, I know that my self is already hard at work repairing the broken connections, busy putting my Humpty-Dumpy-self back together again so that it will points to and promise a future. I like the comfort of linear time or, at least, am used to it.

And, although I am right here talking to you, I don't know just where that is just now. I even have to apologize to myself for having very little clue as to what is coming next, although last night I had no doubt I was headed here and there. It was quite clear.

I write this to give those of you unfamiliar with the inner or psychological effects of solar flares (and sometimes eclipses) an idea of how cosmic events change us. I have written much of late about change and what it does to us, but what I just wrote out above is a good example of how change can appear, like we have (at least briefly) run out of time and are once again standing somewhere in the universe looking around for a thread to follow.

I hope you get the idea. Otherwise, I am just exposing myself here for no good reason. Change changes things is my point, and in order for change to do that, what we had been doing has to come up short or empty. And so it has, once again.

As for me, I am used to it. I follow these changes as best I can. I no longer panic when I find myself staring out over the edge of eternity at just nothing at all. I rest in it, relax, and do my best to watch this world of appearances come back into focus and appear once again, this phantasmagoria I call life. It always does, and I learn something in the process.

For one, I learn where I am going only as things fall back into line, as they take on a linear form and direction again, and I settle back down to riding this freight train of time into the so-called future. I love trains. I love looking down long two-tracks in the deep forests until they vanish to a single point in the distance. Linear is so comforting, even if it is not the truth.

So what I will be doing today, and what I will be thinking today, and what I will be writing about today, who knows? I certainly don't. I write right now about this, because I am treading water in the universe, and waiting for linearity to reassert itself, after which time I will be able to tell you…. what I am doing.

Right now I am mostly doing nothing. What about you? How are you taking this time of intense change? Notice anything?


[Photo: Granddaughter Emma gets a piano lesson from my daughter May, whose birthday we were celebrating. May and her husband Seth also sang some new songs they wrote, and May, Seth, Micah, and my son Michael Andrew played music together. Emma was not to be denied. She likes the piano. ]