Babbling in the corner, blanket pulled over my head...

A little over a week ago, the sun spit a watermelon seed at us. I heard about it on NPR, heard the description of the solar cycle, learned that the sun was covered in small spots, much like acne, and that she would pop those zits, one by one, sending a photon spray into the universe. I wanted to stop the broadcast, wanted to save it for later. I had heard of sunspots - sure - but didn't realize they could belch and hiccup and disrupt our dance like a poorly chosen partner.

So, I did what any other regular American would do. Consulted Dr. Google. Found photographs of sunspots so dangerous they could kill us with one cough. The photos at NASA looked like hairy amoeba - the magnetic spots swirl, black and yellow, black and blue - depends on the filter you choose - look like something you'd swirl down the sink, flush into oblivion. The world orders itself into those patterns that please, those that terrify. And the sunspots terrified me. I started seeing them in my dreams: filamented insects scurrying across a fiery surface, some kind of vector of uncatalogued disease, warriors of unspeakable beauty and chaos.

I learned that we once faced a sun spray so large that it cut communication, froze telegraph, sent the aurora lights cascading into tropical lands that only knew the red-orange glow of the sun fading into the ocean. We could die by the very imposing yellow object that gave us life, by Father Sun, by the object that gave us a hundred, a thousand myths. We could die.

I googled again. Found this site. Found the Solar Flare thread. Found out that we are approaching a Solar Maximum next year. Found out that what "they" tell us isn't quite necessarily What Is. And that, my friends, is what prompts this post.

I read the entire Solar thread, all 1034 pages of it, couldn't understand most of it, I'm a simple single mom in a landlocked state, in a land whose cries of drought have echoed for a thousand years, for two thousand. The sun is my lover, my enemy, as it is for everyone in my southwestern land. I decided to let it ruminate. Perhaps we would fry this year. Perhaps next. Perhaps not for a billion years. It's just the ramblings of internet freaks, right?

I jumped to another thread. And the universe exploded. My mind found itself flung into corners dark and wondrous. Was it simply one crazy shooter? Or something else? Aliens. Birth certificates. Music from another era. Chemicals and weapons and destruction, news that doesn't become News, eyewitnesses, people who Know Things, the unspeakable, the unknowable. Why didn't I know about these things?

One of the Regular. One of the sheople. One of the shackled. That was me. Until a week ago. At the age of 46, with two teenage sons at home, a single mother who is discovering her own skin, I am in a terrifying and welcome awakening. I am not the same person I was ten days ago when the sun winked in our direction, sent proton and storm and disrupted our magnetic field. I don't understand it, but know that I will never, ever be the same.

Who are we? What is this life? These are questions I only considered in ways conventional and ordinary. And now I think beyond the newspaper and CNN report. Now I think. And my own mind, dusty from acquiescence, tries to make the leaps.

I'm just babbling in the corner, a blanket pulled over my head. The world, the solar system, the universe isn't what I thought a week ago. And the birth is painful.

Thoughts welcome. Please?