I want to know more about the moon. It never occurred to me that I would see it today - in the morning - or that I would be up before the sun. Wearing only my favorite t-shirt – yellow with neon pink writing: “Welcome to Palm Springs,” bright like a billboard - I feel a slight chill coming off the ocean. It’s quiet and dark and I let my eyes roam.
I’m drawn to an apartment where I see red flashes of light and I wonder if a toddler is up playing with a fire truck or a laser of some kind. I feel thankful this is not something I have ever had to attend to at this hour. Or any hour. But when the hum of freeway traffic turns on as if operated by a switch, I realize the red is a reflection of headlights whizzing by. It’s Monday and people are eager to start their week, go wherever it is they need to go.
From the perch of my patio I consider the moon above me as clouds of fog hide it then reveal it, moving swiftly. Hiding, revealing, hiding, revealing. Why is the moon still out, or up? What’s the right phrase? Does the moon go somewhere once the sun appears, or does light just overwhelm it, pushing it out of the way? I feel foolish not knowing and stare up into the round white mystery as if asking it to answer me. Show me, my silent command, where you vanish to; or are you with us all day? I could Google this later, but I choose instead to wonder.
It’s an exquisite scene, one shown in Halloween movies, missing only the sound of a creature howling to the rhythm of the fog’s movement over the black and navy curtains of sky; the kind of night painted by artists and captured in photographs. I think about grabbing my iPhone that I left sitting near the brewing pot of coffee but I don’t. I need no evidence of this moment. I am here, now, paying witness to a phenomenon. I won’t forget it, but I will look for it again.
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