You can tell that Annie Dillard is a good writer because it doesn't seem like she is trying. Her style is so smooth, seemingly casual and unadorned that it seems as though no effort went into it at all. But of course this really means that a great deal of effort went into it; in the case of the essay on the total eclipse, it took her two years to sort through everything she went through, to recollect it, and to write it out. Because as she makes no small point about, it was an experience that might be classified as holy terror: "You can feel the deadness race up your arm; you can feel the appalling, inhuman speed of your own blood. We saw the wall of shadow coming, and screamed before it hit. This was the universe about which we have read so much and never before felt: the universe as a clockwork of loose spheres flung at stupefying speeds. "(pg. 100-101)

This could be the essence of the dark epiphany; the comprehension of the enormity and darkness of the universe, or God or the gods or whatever we choose to call it--that it what the universe perhaps is, and why it is so shattering to actually percieve, because to see it is to see our own essential selves, which are finite.

Dillard also hits on the way that life goes on. "The mind wants to live forever, or to learn a very good reason why not. The mind wants the world to return its love, or its awareness; the mind wants to know all the world, all eternity, and God. The mind's sidekick, however, will settle for two eggs over easy. The dear stupid body is as easily satisfied as a spaniel. And, incredibly, the simple spaniel can lure the brawling mind to its dish. It is everlastingly funny that the proud, metaphysically ambitious, clamoring mind will hush if you give it an egg."(pg. 99)

We perhaps have to "forget" things, or to let them go, especially experiences that lead you to the edge of the abyss, that are terrifying and awesome and, yes, sublime. Because if you didn't let go and move on to things like fried eggs, you wouldn't be able to function. Maybe the capacity for the mind to "forget" is in some respects a cosmic gift, which we frequently let down by, but which is necessary if we are to function and not struck eternally dumb and into stone.