The twilight sky has moonish, bright, bluish whiteness about it, unperturbed by clouds or other distinguishing features. It feels like sitting under a mirrored window, as if the stars see me but I can’t see them. Except that this mirror is oddly unreflective. I can’t see myself on its shiny surface. I’m so interested in observing the full moon tonight, the Sturgeon Moon, but night stubbornly refuses to come. The diffusive mirror light sky will persist in glowing with summery glee.
Surely, I will become sleepy and retire before the moon ever rises. This serene, eternal evening will outlast me. I will grow old and die, and it will still be twilight, unmovable, quiet, temperature imperceptible in its perfection, neither hot nor cold, more white than blue, more nothing than something. It was a hot day, but that was another life, a sun-dried life full of activity and energy. This is an existence outside of time. All celestial bodies are beyond my reach, beyond even the grasp of my perception. Without them, time halts as if it never had been. Memory fades fast.
Isn’t this the event then? What imagined incredible encounter with nature can stand against the reality of this actual encounter? I wanted fullness, largeness, and color. I receive a blankness so extraordinary I hardly believe it. Now, I feel I should evade the fall of darkness and the anticipated moonrise. I should hold onto this timelessness, strange, lovely, unsatisfactory, liminal space that it is.
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