De Stella Nova

The new star — named after a book by Johannes Kepler in 1604.

I’ve been told many times that I “should” write something but I never believed I could pull it. It wasn’t until last April that I was offered an opportunity by a dear friend of mine to write a creative piece for a local not so popular yet known English newspaper (I’m from Egypt, my native language is Arabic) in the new talent section they’re testing.

Of course I got very excited by the idea but also I got worried that I don’t have what it takes to get published. I always wrote pieces and by the time I’m done with them I click Ctrl+S (Select all) then I delete them. Nobody gets to read them, Nobody gets to see them except for that one piece that survived my ruthless fear of failure and judgement, it was called De Stella Nova.

It’s a prose I wrote while I was participating in a creative writing workshop that had a done a good job in motivating me a bit to get over my fear of blank white papers and actually write something.

I remember very precisely that I spent about 5 hours on this piece squeezing every drop of my creative juice in one of the most crowded cafes in Zamalek (Cairo) on a Friday noon. I had this formula I studied that basically said choose a noun, imagine that this noun is you, give it a struggle and start with “I’m becoming”.

Without any delays, when I sent this piece over, I received wonderful feedback from everyone around me (even though it was a bit difficult due to the fact that it’s jammed with hard vocabulary and as I mentioned our native language is Arabic) and the newspaper agreed to publish it without any questions or edits needed.

The piece is about life struggles, changing, adapting and facing one’s fears.

“De Stella Nova (Meaning: “The new star”)

I am becoming a star, a ridged bulbous entity beaming dauntlessly through a seemingly endless universe. No longer letting the black holes in my surroundings drain my energy and hinder my gleaming. Jolting from one galaxy to another, orbiting larger twinkling stars in search for an ultimate purpose for my life.

I am reeling off my long list of fears and jettisoning my sidetracking vulnerabilities so that it does not impede my journey anymore. Holding onto these few planets that always encircled me even when I thought I was the center of the universe and life in its entirety revolved around me. These few planets that have made sure my auroral glaring remain lit and unharmed by the scorching solar storms of life.

I am thrusting through the space jam of mistakes that I’ve once devoured utterly with no regards to how they’d alter my course orbiting the ambiguous illusion of “living the moment”. I was never attracted to the alluring fields of the future and for that I paid in light years.

I am abandoning star constellations to form my own solar system.

I am bustling through domains I have not dared to stopover before, heaving the poisonous stardust that have always swarmed around my hardcore during my journeys and self-expeditions. The poisonous star dust that have continuously crinkled my surface and dimmed my gloss.

I am becoming invisible yet invincible. Concealed to those who spin around the trifles and the insignificances, visible to those who are willing to travel at great distances and speeds to escape the repeating patterns of life, those who are eager to break free from the shackles of the echoing resonance of emptiness lurking in the void presence of space.

I am becoming my own driving force, my own fueling energy and my own companion and with these thoughts I shall conquer any space.

I am becoming De Stella Nova.”