Makeshift Stars

I set myself a challenge today, which was to clean up the back room of our house. What is technically the unused third bedroom, in recent times has become a storage room. It has two desks in it, one on either side of the room and also two couches, which take up the other two remaining walls. As study's go it’s actually fairly well decked out, the only problem is it isn’t being used. Instead Dom’s never ending collection of school supplies threaten to take over the whole room, with any remaining space being used to hold clothes horses full of Dom’s drying clothes, which in this current weather don’t really dry until the next load is ready to be put on.

My motivation to clean it was to use it for it’s actual purpose, study. While I have been getting some writing done I haven’t been as disciplined recently as much as I’d like. The idea of having that room set up properly, with the intent to lock myself in it for hours of the day in order to force words out of fingers, seemed like one good way to help fix the problem. The windows were by far the filthiest. As no one’s lived in that room for a few years now the grime on the windowsills had crept up to quarantine level, and took more than one bucket of water to properly clean them. The rest of the room wasn’t so bad, just required a tidy up. I organised everything to make sure it all had a place and was then put in it, luckily, something I excel at. The final step was then just a very thorough vacuum of both the floor and couches. I opened the window wide, put some music on, sat down and wrote.

Now to the photo you see above. As cleaning doesn’t immediately lend itself to photo taking I instead took a quick blip. I took a beautifully woven basket we own into the very same room I had cleaned and, turning off the lights, placed a torch underneath it. The effect was pretty much what I was hoping for and I took a number of shots from all angles to make sure I’d get one that stood out for me. While doing so I realised my hand became speckled with many tiny spots of light whenever it passed over the basket. As I was trying to figure out if that would perhaps make an even better blip I looked up to see the whole ceiling and some of the walls were all covered in these scattered lights. It was beautiful. Unfortunately I was unable to photograph it as even with the longest exposure my camera was unable to recreate what I was seeing. Instead I lay down on the floor with the warm smell of Dom’s laundry in my nose, looked up at these makeshift stars that, in this city, manage to glow brighter than the real thing, and just enjoyed them.

- Damian