At four this morning there was no colour in the world, no moon, no yellow smear of streetlight, no windows spilling warmth onto the massive bulk of the empty church outside. The clouds had been ripped clear by strong winds, and the stars were bright. The Plough hung framed by rooftops. In that hollow clarity of insomnia, this perfect slice of the heavens was all I needed.

I rarely see the stars here in a city where the sky is always soft with cloud, but I’ve been thinking about them for weeks while reading about the history of astronomy, stitching star maps into handmade books, and remembering. Remembering places I’ve been where the stars came all the way down to the ground. Remembering reaching up to hold my father’s gloved hand on cold nights as he identified constellations and told their stories. Remembering the rush of realising I was looking at ancient history, seeing light from hundreds, thousands of years ago.

And remembering how we used to stop at the church on the small rise in the fields outside the village. We would lie back against old stones and fall into the stars, gazing until we saw a shooting star. Coming home tired and frustrated by work and long train journeys this was a ritual to shift pace and perspective, to let go and cross the boundary back to where the land and the sky mattered more than deadlines and internecine squabbles. (They always do, but it’s too easy to forget in the noise.)

I’ve been wearing DSH perfumes Vers la Voute Etoilée since four this morning, remembering, but it feels like I’ve been wearing it for decades.  Because there were evening-scented stocks among those graves, a thin tangle of night-blooming jasmine against a wall, a pale clump of nicotiana by the gardener’s shed. Even in winter when the flowers were long gone, autumn leaves were decaying into the earth, and the air sparkled with ice as much as starlight, the ghost of those smells always drifted somewhere between reality and memory.

Wrapped in a blanket and this spiced, skin-warm perfume full of night air, I waited, again, for that falling streak of light to release me back to the world.

(This sample was one from a selection given by Dawn.)

Originally posted 11 September 2019