stars.
(photo from natureandbeauty)
One thing about me, is that I am a sucker for those little lights we see above our heads. Space. Stars. Planets. Northern lights. I used to have a poster of constellations above my bed, right next to my monstrous 911 boyband posters. While other kids wanted to grow up and become doctors, lawyers and engineers, my dream was to be an astronaut.
Before that I wanted to be an archaeologist because I was really into Egyptian/Greek cultures at the time and could name 20 dinosaurs off the top of my head.. but that’s a whole other geekfest to share with you guys.
When I turned 11 my grandpa got me a telescope, complete with a giant book about the night skies and that constellation poster I mentioned before. Unfortunately with the smog and pollution in the atmosphere, Jakarta skies are nowhere near ideal for stargazing, so the most I could do is stare at the full moon for around half an hour every month. Eventually it got quite boring. My telescope stayed in a corner for years afterwards.
Bandung skies were somewhat clearer. I remember coming home after a school concert at Dago Tea House with a friend, tripping over and looking up by accident, and I saw the most amazing spread of starlights. But it still looked far away. They looked like tiny glowing dust, scattered across the sky as though someone forgot to clean it up, while in the pictures I saw in books - set in deserts and by the brink of oceans - the stars seemed so bright, so near and so impressively large that you could almost touch it with your bare fingertips.
Whenever I see images of a canopy of stars, coloured skies, clouds, landscapes, sunsets, auroras, space, nebulas, galaxies.. I think about how grand this world actually is. And our science has only just covered a small percentage of what’s really out there, beyond our solar system. Then I realize that we know absolutely nothing. In this universe, we are even smaller than the smallest of small specks…
Hello, speck.
