December's full moon

A full moon rose over town last night more pregnant and brilliant than ever, filling the night with the bright cold lucency that paints everything a silver blue. Thus the first Christmas without Timm approaches.

That light is bittersweet, the sort of comfort that beautiful to the eye yet cold to the touch, is present yet remote, ghostly, of an old clarity which the world full understands, feeling the ache something lost so very long ago – as the moon was once of this earth and now tides around, ever more distant in a billions-year farewell. One day, long after life has faded from Earth, the Moon will finally pull loose and drift off into space, unlit, unloved, unnoticed among all the other space junk. Some day … but for now it arcs over our night so brilliant it fills all with its otherlight, softly pacing over our dreams, our rooftops, Timm’s grave.

I was laying on the couch this morning for a while after reading and writing, wrapped in a blanket, Hugo in the window at my head, Belle curled between my legs. I watched the dawn light creep into the eastern horizon, slowly erasing the blue moonlight of my vigil.

I thought about Timm’s best pictures, what he was able to capture and finalize in them. Each of them the whole inside of a world, the entire experience of discovery and wonder. Beauty’s harrows perhaps, wombs which give birth to the full nurture of nature. I dunno, I can’t really say it, but as I reflected on photos like these I felt what Timm felt at those moments, the whole gestalt of beauty, a paradox of awe—the eternity of one captured image—and awfulness, for the moment always fades.

So many wasted frames to capture so few perfect blossoms and vistas and children’s faces – and yet the wonder of Timm is that there are so many more photo bouquets yet to share.