I know nothing with any certainty…

It has been a really rough couple of weeks, work-wise, which largely explains why I haven’t updated my blog in quite some time. I’ve had several papers and presentations that have kept me at school til late in the evening almost every day this week. In fact, last night I decided to simply spend the night in my school so that I could get more work done. It didn’t really pan out, since I was so exhausted that I just ended up falling asleep on a couch, but it made for a good story this evening when we were comparing how long we had been at school for. I won the contest, but I don’t really think you could call it much of a victory.

I had to walk home tonight since I missed my bus (it comes once an hour, damn non-peak hours) and therefore didn’t get home until 11 (My class had an evening of presentations that was supposed to last 3 hours but went closer to 4). I am up at 4 a.m. wrestling with a paper on right-wing populism in Denmark.

But there has been a moment bright enough in all of this to make me pause and write it all down and share. When I reached my house tonight, I looked up and saw a skyful of stars. I’ve mentioned how cloudy it is in Denmark–this is the first time in a while that I’ve really seen the stars. And I had a whole expanse of them (hurray for the countryside!). For a moment, I could let go of my papers and my exhaustion and just stare upwards, losing sight of things for a while. The silence of my village met the stars and I feel like I could have stayed there for a long time, picking out the little points of light scattered in the inky black.

I’m inside now, taking on this paper. But the stars are still outside my window, so it’s not so bad.

A more complete update on my life comes soon!

p.s. The post title is the beginning of a Van Gogh quote: “I know nothing with any certainty but the sight of stars makes me dream.” I do like that Van Gogh.