So Many Stars (First Night Back in Perranporth)

So many stars.
Just been out in the garden for a cigarette. Icy air. A neighbour calls out for a dog. No cars. Silence, except for the hissing sea, which somehow only seems to increase the silence, and the stars. So many stars. Dizzying really. Get used to the street lamps drowning the stars in Brighton, know that you can't see all of them because of the city glare, but you never quite realise how many are lost till the city is taken away...
And the silence. Miles and miles of silence. Out over the garden, and across the field to the cliff top path; tin mining ghosts, echoes of old industry falling into stones and ruin, quarry workings, and that sea (The Atlantic?) so unlike the calm and tranquil Brighton coast. The silence holds dominion here, casts its pall over the town, and out beyond the town, over the sand dunes, the thousand labyrinthine paths, St Piran's Cross, the Oratory, a lost church, buried beneath the sands.
The silence has a weight, almost a burden.

Left Brighton when it was still dark this morning. Greying skies fading backwards. Remnants of snow on the outskirts of town. Radio Two on in the car, detailing a litany of car crashes and pile ups, closed airports and warnings 'do not travel unless absolutely necessary'. Lanes closed by scattered cars. Police sirens, ambulances. Rain and sleet. Watching the temperature guage in the car drop down to zero. Tried to sleep in the car but kept being awoken by Christmas songs from Radio Two. Stopping at a transport cafe somewhere in the west country for a bacon sandwich, hidden from the motorway by sad trees. Looking out of a window in the cafe, seeing scraggy December bushes pushing up against the glass. Began thinking about December blackberries, if there is such a thing, distilled into deep winter wine. Drunk on short days and absolute nights... Reminded me of something but I couldn't quite think what.

Down in Perranporth for a week. Last chapter of this strange and difficult decade. 2666 by Robert Bolano and a volume of ghost stories to read. The attic full of lost things; half filled notebooks, abandoned photographs, books unread for years, comics from my childhood, all waiting traps for the complacent nostalgic.

I have a slight cold, lending my already travel-tired mind, a miasma of fever. Travelling in december is always deperate and beautiful, racing the night across the country, watching it grow dark in unfamiliar towns.

Keep thinking oif the sky outside though, that profound silence, the near, though remote-sounding sea, and the tilted bowl of the moon, spilling the night like a flood amongst an impossible conspiracy of stars.