It was raining really hard yesterday afternoon. I was sitting in class and I could hear the window across the auditorium rattle. When I looked out the trees were shaking uncontrollably from the wind, it was actually pretty frightening and all I could think about for the remainder of the class was, "how am I going to get home?" But afterwards it died down and the sky was a clear blue. As clear blue as it can ever get that is.
Then night fell and you could actually see the stars. You couldn't see astronomic clouds stretch out millions of lightyears before you and the milky way wasn't visible or anything like that, but it's rare that you get to see even a handful of stars here. There is always too much air and light pollution floating above our heads, or the clouds would be so thick and dark that you couldn't see past them. That wasn't the case last night.
When I got home I quickly ate my dinner and raced to my room, climbed out the window and lied down on our roof. It was beautiful, the moon was rising just behind me so you can see the light passing through and around the thin puffs of cloud that remained after the storm earlier on. I'm not going to make it out like a spiritual awakening or a poignant experience. I didn't get any answers just by looking at the stars that night, God didn't talk to me, nature didn't whisper a word of revelation, all that happened was I got to listen to the night. I could hear children laughing and talking (really loudly!) from a few houses down, the voice of a man over a speaker giving his daily religious speech from the mosque by the gate of our housing complex, every now and then the roars of a motorbike or car could be heard but everything else was quiet. It was quiet and lonely, but it was beautiful and that was about as comfortable I've ever been for a long time. Then I got sleepy, crawled back into my room, tucked myself in bed, and when I woke up it was March.
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