A study of light and shadow

What is luminous and shadowy? A new moon.
This was pointed out to me by Anne Lamott while I drove looking at the new moon. I was in Santa Cruz at the time and there was some midnight haze fog making the edges of the moon softer less definite. You could see the dark side of the moon, the rest of the circumference not highlighted by the sun, and then there was the luminous side hanging like a smile in the sky.

Master of stage design, Joseph Svoboda's genius was in his innovation, artistry and use of light. He said, "Darkness is my raw material. Just as the sculptor needs his clay, the carver needs his wood; I carve my theatre out of darkness."

Reminds me of life living forward, always into the darkness, into the unknown, our flashlight created from the beam of our attention.

Also, noteworthy... you can only see shadow if there is sun. And it is not the other way around, you do not see dark because there is light. Think about it, if there is no light, there is no shadow; even though, shadow is the absence of light, without the light there is no shadow. Huh? What else functions in this way? To know hunger you must too know the feeling of being full. But how many paradoxes exist together at the same moment, and because of their presence make the other paradox exist? (Excited and scared, happy and sad, not paradoxes, but opposites existing in tandom. It is the event that can bring on two emotions at once. But this is not about emotions. This is two circumstances... Because there is light through film a projection is made. Is it a simple cause and effect? But the effect is the absence of the cause....That seems unique. Hydochloric acid and a change agent, alters both substances into something different. Maybe this is closer to the magic of alchemy. You need some light to see the shadow. In the dead of night there is no shadow because everything is black.

John O'Donohue says, "Even light which enables us to see everything , cannot see itself. Light is blind." (p.119) This feels like the other half of the jigsaw. Shadow can see itself because it can see the light, and its presence in the light. The dark of night has the stars to shine bright so the dark can see where it ends and where it begins. But the sun, the stars, get in their own way not able to see the dark, not able to see what they can't see. And in turn not able to distinguish who they are, for everywhere they go, there they are, lighting the way, and so changing the landscape, they don't know what it looks like without them.

And what did John O'Donohue say? That the living by the direction of the soul is like living by candle light instead of the false light of certainty.