The Moon

For early humans, the night sky was a chaos of stars, but the Moon was a reliable narrator. It told a story of birth, growth, death, and resurrection every 29.5 days. This cycle was the first 'month' (a word cognate with 'moon'), a unit of time that belonged to everyone. It allowed scattered tribes to coordinate meetings, track pregnancies, and anticipate the seasons.

The Moon exerts a physical grip on the Earth, dragging the oceans in a rhythm that life adapted to long before it crawled onto land. We carry this tidal time in our biology. The Moon reminds us that time is not just a mental construct but a physical force—a gravity that pulls on the water in our cells and the rhythm of our days.