Starry Starry

I was out near the rural areas over the escarpment last week, with SL and SP. It was a smooth pleasant trip out over the escarpment.

It was so dark at night, and the lights of houses and villages were not distinguishable from thousands of stars in the night sky. I felt like I was just standing in a sea of stars, reminiscent of a scene from Immortal Beloved, when after the young Beethoven escaped from his abusive dad, he found solace as he jumped into a lake in a dark forest and swam.

The scene was unforgettable, as the young protagonist stay afloat (and looked up to the starry night sky) on the lake which reflected all the thousands of stars in the night sky. For a few minutes, I immersed myself into that haven as I looked far and around me.

There amongst the sea of magical lights, laid the good old Orion, as well as the Subaru-logo-inspiring Pleiades', which you cannot see but you can notice with your peripheral vision if u look away from it. I was also excited to catch Aries, which is quite a faint constellation to find. Thankfully it was a dark night, and there was no city light pollution.

In my childhood, I heard of how in the older days, navigators used the stars to find their way across seas. I was impressed when I learnt of that; I wanted to be able to do that when I grow up: to navigate with the help of the stars! though I never really thought about becoming a sailor.

In recent years though, someone close to me told me that he had wanted to be a sailor, but his parents disapproved of it. That was kinda strange and nice to find out, because one, he had never shared much of himself with me, and two, he had opposed my ambition too.

There is a hymn from the fifties with a line of lyrics that read "... in the stars His handiwork I see..." but I did not think of that song when I saw the stars, perhaps because the beauty of a starry night is too poetic for a song to match... sometimes only the quietness of the night can be the right accompaniment to such a sight.

I found a clip of the scene from the aforesaid movie, eloquently tracked with the last movement of the composer's monumental ninth. Quite well done really.