“Hermosa Beach”

“As he looked out over this green- and gray-blue world, it struck Skylar as a blank piece of linen on which the painter had only completed the background and which awaited the subject matter of the work as a cradle awaits its babe. A waxing crescent moon revealed itself from behind the clouds: the banana-shaped fragment hung low in the sky, radiant as if it mistook itself for a chunk of the sun. The shadowed portion of the satellite being visible in outline, one’s eye could easily picture the full orb. So similarly was the crescent colored and positioned that Skylar readily identified it with an image from one of his childhood fairy-tale books of a cow jumping over a young moon, whose features included rouged cheeks, a puckered mouth, and startled eyes.”