Thursday Morning, 5AM

The full moon sets, and another day begins. WRITTEN & ILLUSTRATED by PETER MOORE

MY EYES POPPED OPEN. The bedroom was inky black. No light had yet leaked in around the edges of curtains, so I knew: It was too early to leave my golden slumbers. And yet my mind was racing. So I fumbled around on my bedside bookshelf for my phone.

O.K., 5:02AM it is.

Time to begin my day!

Twenty minutes later I had my morning coffee in hand, and I was seated in my favorite chair, overlooking our backyard. Except, I couldn’t see anything but the setting moon, which was full.

In a meditation class I attended, the instructor proposed a morning exercise. She asked us to simply sit with our morning coffee, to take that time to take in the sensations of the day, to treat our thoughts like a cloud moving across the moon, and let them drift off the same way they appeared.

That was easy last Thursday morning, because I could see actual clouds drifting across the actual moon. It was magical, really.