Moon Tree
There is no Man-in-the-Moon face to distract our gaze. The lunar landscape is deftly blurred, yet retains its luminescence, emphasizing the tree limbs' reticular nature. The tree is leafless, reminiscent of the dendrite structure of the nervous system. The photographer straps us into his visual Time Machine, transporting us far back to nascent beginnings; elemental, primeval germinations, before the apple blossom, retro-fitting our in-utero neural network formation, past the interminable post-Jurassic Winter, beyond the Freudian subconscious, the Jungian collective unconsciousness, and the guilt that drove Judas Iscariot to hang himself, perhaps, from a tree like this very one. The tree branches are illuminated from the foreground, as if the moonlight has become translucent from the background, and its glow draws us to it like a sphinx moth to a flame. The arboreal specter's limb-like branches materialize from the night sky out of nowhere as though ragged, alien Sargasso seaweed appendages reaching deep down along a black abyss ocean floor, prying open a netherworld oyster to ravage its pearl. Beauty and the beast, but mostly beauty.