It’s a new month, the second of the year already. It’s not yet a new moon; that will come later, but by the dominant culture’s way of marking time, we began a new span of time yesterday, with a new name.
By my own people’s way of reckoning, in just under two weeks, we’ll pass from the watchful eye of the Great Spirit Moon into the Bear Moon of winter’s very heart. Where I’m from, it’s the season when cold settles in as a way of life, when one simply expects deep snows and bitter winds as the norm.
Here, it’s less predictable (and all the more so now, with climate change taking hold and refusing to let go). at 7,500 feet above sea level, it doesn’t really matter that the region is considered “desert”; it’s actually “high desert,” and at this elevation, the temperatures swing wildly even with the space of a day’s time. Yesterday, we awakened to nearly a foot of snow on the ground, the result of a now vanishingly rare two full days of snow falling from the sky. By afternoon, the mercury had shot up well into the forties, fast approaching fifty. Yet at seven o’clock this morning, it was ten, with a wind chill of two.
Despite the confusion of the shedding animals and budding plants alike, winter is still here.
On a night like last night, when the air is crystal-clear and the moon not yet full, her light seems brilliantly cold. Other times, even in winter, her glow is softened, seemingly warmed, by whatever blue haze colors the sky. Two years ago, Wings decided to take a series of photos of her face, spanning a period of days, to capture her evolution as she waxed from shy to bold. These images are the result.
The one above, taken first, a little past new. [He has one of that stage, too, actually, but for purposes of this series, the congruity of the three central phases tells her story best.] Of the three, it’s my favorite — a reminder of the horned moons scudding above the treetops, across the dark, forbidding skies of my childhood. You can almost see the profile of the face shown in countless pop-art renderings. Better, you can see the pores, the variations of tone, the texture and color of her actual face. Imperfect by commercial standards; all the more perfectly beautiful for that.
Some days later, of course, she’d gotten braver:
She was willing to show half of her face to the world below. She still wears a blue veil over one side, one that seems to send a sheer bit of azure smoke over the part of her that’s visible. She appears as no Salome, though; her unveiling is matter-of-fact rather than seductive, one designed to bless the people, not set them against one another.
Finally, she reaches the penultimate stage of her evolution and revolution, summoning the courage to lend most of her face to light the earth, if not yet bold enough to face it head-on.
Of course, we like to paint her image in motifs of courage and strength, but perhaps it has nothing to do with any of those things; perhaps it’s yet another example of the spirits, with a broader, deeper perspective, protecting us from harm. Unmediated, unmoderated, unmodulated, even light can be dangerous. Too little, and the cold takes over; too much, and the world burns.
Last month, I wrote a bit about the role the moon plays in our way of life. She is Mother, Grandmother, a female spirit that blesses our nights and lights our paths. However much of her face she wishes to display, it’s always beautiful.
~ Aji
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All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2015; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
