Stars

Every Saturday starts the same way. I lurch from my bed at the sound of my phone’s alarm, vibrating its way across my hardwood floor. Vrrrrtt Vrrrrtt Vrrrrrtt. I bash through the shower, and try not to freeze my nuts off as I chuck on my work clothes. Jeans and a t-shirt – a classic combo as old as whichever item was invented last. Pat-check my pockets. Wallet. Smokes. Keys. Phone. I’m ready to leave the house. I swing the door shut behind me and light a dirty morning cigarette. My eyes squint against the light and my wet hair sticks cold against my head. I start begrudgingly in the direction of Greville Street.

At a particular point about two houses down the street, where I’m feeling at my most apathetic about the day, someone has taken the liberty of a small street-installation artwork. Sprayed-white stencil, on the asphalt: “there are stars beneath your feet”. At first I thought it marked the site of some sort of sacred celebrity burial ground. But no. How facetiously tainted and trained my brain has become. Thankyou, E! News.

The words must have been put there by some tiresome hippy, still brimming with the wonder found in the everyday. I hate those people – more than most. Their Zenless content in nothingness makes me uncomfortable. It’s condescending. But something about this particular phrase captures my imagination. Stars beneath my feet. All the way through the asphalt, through the dirt, the rock, the magma, and the core, the magma, the rock, the dirt, and the asphalt are the stars above the heads of the people on the other side of the world. And for that minute I’m washed with a perspective of my exact place in the universe – the vastness, the 3-dimentionality, the insignificance, the circularity, the minuteness, the importance, the gravity. It never fails to steal a smile across my face. Tired, wet and smoking, I feel like a full and proper person.

It is all shattered when I realise that in that moment, I’m no better than that tiresome, condescending hippy.