The Weight of the Horizon

The day does not end with a shout. It ends with a withdrawal. We watch the light retreat, pulling itself back from the fields, from the water, from the edges of our own skin. There is a specific kind of hunger that arrives then—a desire to hold onto the warmth just a moment longer, even as the cold begins to settle in the marrow. We are creatures of the threshold. We stand between what we have seen and what we are about to lose. It is a quiet violence, this transition. The sky bruises, the earth darkens, and we are left to wonder if the color remains because it is beautiful, or because it is trying to warn us of the coming night. We wait for the final ember to vanish. Does the darkness feel the same weight as we do when it finally arrives?

Rob van der Waal has captured this fleeting transition in his work titled Burning Sky. It holds the exact moment before the light concedes to the dark. Does it feel like a beginning or an end to you?