Lessons In Starlight

I have the clearest memory of being sat at the table of a Parisian café alongside my mother in my early teens. She was a French teacher and we were on one of our reconnaissance missions to plan a trip for her class. The weather was warm, and we loved nothing more than to sit outside and watch the world go by.

I don’t know the thoughts that filled her head, but mine were of the stories of these mysterious strangers, speaking in rapid-fire to each other in a language I couldn’t understand. Where were they coming from and going to, did they have families, what did they do all day? Questions, and more questions, responded to by my seemingly limitless and wild imagination as I created outlandish existences for them. I could have spent hours like that and to be honest, it’s still a favourite pass time. There are no boring people, and no normal ones either.

That day, the questions in my head had narrowed to one ‘How?’ How could they rush about if they knew we were just tiny specks on a ball spinning in space?

For some reason, it had become a big preoccupation of mine, and one I couldn’t seem to let go of. I looked up at the sky, a blanket of white, the atmosphere above hidden from my gaze. Unknowable to me, but hanging over me nonetheless. But for these people, rushing to and fro on Paris’s busy streets, the sky above them was something to be aware of and yet completely ignored. I just couldn’t understand.

I remember badgering my mother with it. My confusion quickly becoming an irritation as her patience wore thin. Couldn’t I just enjoy the moment, couldn’t I let it go and get on with it like everyone else? I remember her warning me that one day my questions would get me into trouble. I think she meant that sometimes you have to give up the big picture to enjoy the small one, but for me, the speck on the ball, spinning in space, how could anything else matter.

Time went by, I grew up and of course, the smaller picture became more engrossing. A job, a partner, a family, and all the minutiae of daily life. I became one of the faces blurred into the crowd. No longer in Paris or London where I grew up, but on busy streets all the same.

I never lost the sky though, and my evenings were often my window into wonder.

With the small people asleep and the house finally quiet and still, I would wrap myself up and head outside. Lying on the trampoline that in daylight sent laughter bouncing over the garden fence, but now in the dark, could become my oversized bed. Its gentle wave-like movement only adding to the sensation of being cast adrift from the day.

I would watch the wisps of clouds flow past me and wait for the darkness to be complete as my eyes adjusted. The sky above would become soften into velvet and with my blanket cocooning me, the cold of the night would recede and the warmth of calm would enter. The night sky not as an empty desolate place, but as the infinite backdrop of possibilities.

Then the reveal.

The blinking on, one by one of the most incredible light show. Each constellation slowly coming into focus and with luck a planet or two.

I would be reminded once again that I was on Earth. A sphere, one of many, endlessly spinning. Just one of the billions of people, all rushing around, creating a hundred little ‘important’ things to do that demanded my time and attention, perhaps to avoid how simple it all actually is. Isn’t the stillness the hardest part? The attempted meditations and the moments alone with a person when words dry up and you don’t want them to. The stillness of the moments when you are waiting for news, wishing you could hold back the answers you know are coming. The moments in which your exhaustion is so complete, you will the time away, just so you can rest. We claim to crave the stillness but succeed in avoiding it.

With the reminder of my teenage obsession, the dramas of daily life ease away. The frustrations of a woman with too much to do and too little time, the worries and irritations over the bickering and upsets of the day. All gone, as I am reminded of the bigger picture. The one that has me only existing for a brief moment in the grand story. A blink of an eye. An idea that causes me no anxiety or fear, but instead rekindles a deep calm and understanding that truly there is nothing I need do but enjoy my time, every second of it.

I lie there, breathing in the stars, and all their vastness. Taking them into me and releasing through my body their whispers of infinite potential. I drink in their light. Light that had to travel so far to shine down on me, alone in my garden. Illuminating the simplicity that had acted as a true north and that I have returned to time and again. Righting my way as I sail through storm after storm of my own making.

When I was a child the stars caused me problems, they were a tormenting thought I just couldn’t let go of. Now they remind me of who I am and how simple this life can be when I let things fall away. The beautiful and endless potential at the heart of everything. The feminine dark, full of life and the beginning of everything. The warmth of a summer evening when all is quiet and stillness is welcomed in after a long day.