Stars
There is something about stars that is truly mesmerizing. I first felt it on a school holiday in Italy. 11 pm on a cool, Italian summer night, lying on my back on the grass, near the room. I wasn't homesick yet the feeling they evoked was as if I was. This enchantment and vastness that made me feel so small, yet not the least bit insignificant. This tiny ball of gas burning bright, a light year away, posed so many questions. How big is the universe? If the universe is expanding, what is it expanding into?
Up there was everything, I would probably never know. I was struck by the realisation that everything was above me. Out there. It should have made me feel so bantam; an ephemeral dot, desperately trying to cling to the skin of a world, spinning at a thousand miles an hour, in an infinite universe. But it wasn't the case.
Those tiny specks of light shining against an super temporal expanse of black. No sound. No air. Just hundreds of little flecks, shining a million years away. Their existence, a effervescent beacon from the past whose light was now extinguished, only their echo to be seen by people who dare to look up on a world so very far away.
I lay there, on my back, staring up at the sky, oblivious to friends. I pondered life, the universe and the fate and workings of some luminous spheres of plasma, sequestered and inaccessible, beyond range and comprehension and then, in the morning, the sun rose and it dawned on me. The reason the stars are so captivating is because they are stars. a self evident conclusion, if ever there was, but it is hard to articulate. They are peace and enchantment, thought conjuring and eternally constant.
The stars diminish or move, get blocked behind light pollution, or black clouds, but they stay with you. Those stars I saw, two years ago, may be gone now, in fact they had probably already perished in their final expansion, or burned cold and withered even then, yet they remain, etched beneath my eyelids, with me when I close my eyes.
“She says nothing at all, but simply stares upward into the dark sky and watches, with sad eyes, the slow dance of the infinite stars.” “I like the stars. It's the illusion of permanence, I think. I mean, they're always flaring up and caving in and going out. But from here, I can pretend...I can pretend that things last. I can pretend that lives last longer than moments. Gods come, and gods go. Mortals flicker and flash and fade. Worlds don't last; and stars and galaxies are transient, fleeting things that twinkle like fireflies and vanish into cold and dust. But I can pretend...”― Neil Gaiman ( I think he gets it)
Up there was everything, I would probably never know. I was struck by the realisation that everything was above me. Out there. It should have made me feel so bantam; an ephemeral dot, desperately trying to cling to the skin of a world, spinning at a thousand miles an hour, in an infinite universe. But it wasn't the case.
Those tiny specks of light shining against an super temporal expanse of black. No sound. No air. Just hundreds of little flecks, shining a million years away. Their existence, a effervescent beacon from the past whose light was now extinguished, only their echo to be seen by people who dare to look up on a world so very far away.
I lay there, on my back, staring up at the sky, oblivious to friends. I pondered life, the universe and the fate and workings of some luminous spheres of plasma, sequestered and inaccessible, beyond range and comprehension and then, in the morning, the sun rose and it dawned on me. The reason the stars are so captivating is because they are stars. a self evident conclusion, if ever there was, but it is hard to articulate. They are peace and enchantment, thought conjuring and eternally constant.
The stars diminish or move, get blocked behind light pollution, or black clouds, but they stay with you. Those stars I saw, two years ago, may be gone now, in fact they had probably already perished in their final expansion, or burned cold and withered even then, yet they remain, etched beneath my eyelids, with me when I close my eyes.
“She says nothing at all, but simply stares upward into the dark sky and watches, with sad eyes, the slow dance of the infinite stars.” “I like the stars. It's the illusion of permanence, I think. I mean, they're always flaring up and caving in and going out. But from here, I can pretend...I can pretend that things last. I can pretend that lives last longer than moments. Gods come, and gods go. Mortals flicker and flash and fade. Worlds don't last; and stars and galaxies are transient, fleeting things that twinkle like fireflies and vanish into cold and dust. But I can pretend...”― Neil Gaiman ( I think he gets it)
M xxx
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