DRAWING BY PAULA PIKKULA AURSLAND
COMET STREAKS OVER ME
BY MICHAEL PAUL McCUSKER
Thursday, 3/21/96
This morning Astoria shakes, rattles and rolls. People
fear an earthquake, perhaps connected to a volcano erupting a
hundred miles out in the Pacific Ocean. We team, however that
we were in the path of a sonic boom caused by Naval jet fighter
bombers dropping like stones from several thousand feet to
shoot missiles at a target. The Navy and other military units
seem to be playing wargames off the Oregon and Washington
coasts (simultaneous to China's imperial threats to Taiwan with
a naval fleet rattling missies on the other side of the Pacific).
BOOM! ITS AN AIRQUAKE, NOT AN EARTHQUAKE, The
Daily Astorian bannedined today's paper. Tsunami warnings are
sent out and Clatsop County beaches evacuated. (The problem
wth escaping from a tsunami coming upriver to Astoria during
an earthquake is that people running up the hill wll probably be
buried when it collapses.)
A friend tells me the shaking was due to Comet Hyaku-
take which is passing Earth and which I might see one of these
nights near the Big Dipper if the clouds ever clear away long
enough. 'The comet's closer than they're telling us," my friend
says: 'The world ends Sunday," the day the comet is closest to
earth.
The Great Comet of 1996 (as it is being called, following
The Great Blizzard & The Great Flood) is about 9.3 million miles
away from Earth ("a hair's breadth distance in the vastness of
interplanetary space," an Oregonian reporter writes; but our tiny
planet is a very small target in that vastness, scientists soothe)
and traveling past earth at 25 miles a second. The comet is a
surprise no one seems to have expected (everyone was rhapso
dizing about Comet Hal-Bop due next year) and It is claimed to
be the biggest and brightest in 20 years, following a number of
duds like Kohotek (and Halley's was disappointing a decade ago
after all the hype preceding its arrival). A scientist of the Inter
national Astronomical Union said the last human beings to see
Comet Hyakutake (named after a Japanese man v/io first saw it
in January) were Stone Age hunter/gatherers about 20,000 years
ago
I look for what comets are in Timothy Fems' Coming Of
Age In The Milky Way. Comets, he writes "are chunks of ice and
dirt that fall in from the outer solar system, sprouting long, glow
ing 'tails' of vapor and dust blown off by the sun's heat and by
solar wnd." He aptly describes Comet Hyakutake when he says
the appearance of new comets cannot be predicted. Comets
"appear to originate in a cloud near the outer reaches of the
solar system, about which little is understood," Fems writes.
'Their orbits, altered by encounters with the planets and by the
kick of their own vapor jets, remain difficult to predict as well."
"Only in the vicinity of the sun do they blaze up. They
catch fire like a sulfur match, and...a bluish flame leaps forth,"
wrote a 19th century astronomer about comets. Comets are a
"striking testimony to the enormity of the solar system," Richard
Grassinger writes in The Night Sky.'They come, seemingly from
the depths of space and pass to the heart of the (solar) system
in eccentric orbits slightly perturbed by the planets according to
their sizes and proximity of their approach."
Tonight Comet Hyakutake wll be just to the right of the
star Arcturus. It will sail over the North Pole and disappear into
the sun's glare in late April. It is due to swng around the sun
beginning May 1 and its return trip past this planet to the vast
void beyond Pluto wll be visible in the southern hemisphere
only.
Friday, 3/22
The sky clears tonight after rain. Near midnight I go out
side my house (which is in a spruce grove halfway up one of
Astoria's hills). Stars are clear in the spiky sky. I easily find the
Big Dipper laying in treetops and trace an arc eastward through
the shaggy cones of tall trees Between the crowis of two trees
I find a star a fist-width north of Arcturus. Underneath it a dimly
bright fuzzball which is Comet Hyakutake Its first effect on me
is hydraulic; I piss then my bowels take me quickly inside. Back
outside, I think I am able to register it move though not actually
see it. After a few minutes the comet seems not directly under
neath the star (or the star might be followng earth's spin). The
comet and stars climb over my head Sounds of car motors at
the bottom of the hill on the city's downtown waterfront itch my
ears as I stare into the silence of space. I try to project myself
20,000 years into the past when this comet made its last swing
near Earth. I wonder if any of my Paleolithic ancestors noticed
the comet and what they might have thought of it.
Are we any more sophisticated? Storms, floods, lights in
the sky. Ancient portents of cataclysmic events. Signs to strain a
civilized cosmology.
People tried to protect themselves from Halley's comet
in 1910 with alms and patent medicines, and Oklahoma sheriffs
prevented the sacrifice of a virgin to placate the comet god by a
sect called the Sacred Flowers. Comets have an unsavory repu
tation as heralds of disaster — from Latin, dis-astra, 'against the
stars'. This is because they are unpredictable. Like Comet Hya
kutake which seems to have appeared from nowhere.
"Do you believe in time travel?" Sam Devereaux asked
me yesterday. "Yes I do," I said, thinking of the expanse of time
since the comet's last appearance. "I've traveled a few seconds
through time since you asked the question."
Saturday, 3/23
I had hoped to show Comet Hyakutake to Connie
Kimble's sons tonight (Johnnie Blue, Brendan & Issac) but they
are asleep by the time the sky clears long enough for it to be
visible. Open tears in the swiftly moving ocean of clouds that
flood over Astoria on a wet cold west wind reveal the comet as a
faded lint ball to my naked eye. It is much farther north than last
night, almost about to hitch a ride on the last star of the Big
Dipper's handle. I unsuccessfully try to wake up the oldest boy,
Johnnie Blue (who just turned 8), asleep on the couch until his
mother comes home from a night out with a school chum and
her teenaged daughter from New Mexico. For several minutes I
stare up at the comet which is obscured continuously by cloud
riffs (and I lose sight of it for a few moments when a neighbor
turns on bright lights in a back room of an old house) until a solid
blanket dissolves comet and stars and drains drizzle from its
plump stomach. A large ship clanks upriver past Astoria's water
front the same instant Comet Hyakutake disappears; comets of
sky and ocean.
A comet viewing party planned for tonight atop the
Astoria Column on Coxcomb Hill is canceled due to the clouds.
I am lucky to catch the glimpses of it that I have.
Sunday, 3/24
Best night yet for comet watching. Comet Hyakutake is
closest to Earth tonight and tomorrow night, and so far has not
collided with us. I first see it in a clear sky from the front porch of
Peter Unander's house, above the roofs of old houses across the
street. Tonight I can see its tail. I point the comet out to almost
COLUMBIA RIVER
MARITIME MUSEUM
VISIT THE MUSEUM SHOP
IN ASTORIA, OREGON
everybody at a party at Peter's house. He shows photographs of
his most recent trip to France to see his parents, his mother in
the south, his father Egil (Prince of Astoria) in Paris. Later he
plays an old upright piano accompanied by drums and a slide
trombone. His clothes are distinctly French. I tell him he
resembles cabaret musicians of 1930s Algiers.On the porch
we all look east at the northbound comet, huddled close, our
unconscious need for mutual warmth and protection when
confronted with cold dark eternal space.The comet is outside
our reach; it mocks our puny superiority over a peewee planet.
It ridicules our misspent mediocrity. I am as common as dust
in this brief interval of history I am sentient, despite an insistent
rattle in my brain that claims I am unique. My greatest contri
bution to Earth is my waste products. My death ends all life as
far I am concerned. DOA to the worms. But it’s really like a
blues song might be: Old Comet Don't Care!
At least I am able to point out Comet Hyakutake to
Connie Kimble's three sons tonight. We sit at the top of Peter's
steep porch, a cluster of kneeling and sitting homo sapiens
sapiens, at least half of us inheritors of the next millennium. I
wonder aloud how many millions of human terrestrials are look
ing up at the comet at this same moment we huddle together on
a Pacific Northwest porch. The last time it screeched past Earth
there were probably no more than 50 million human beings on
the planet (a guess impossible to prove). This visit we number
5 billion. One of the billions said from across the street a few
things about the comet I was unable to hear clearly; I remarked
to my cluster group on the porch that we are all linked by the
communications media and have read the same newspaper
articles or listened to radio/TV explicators factoiding the comet's
brief passage through our sky. (There is also an Internet link wth
information pages and finder charts.)
I make postcards of the comet when I walk home. I stop
several places and look at it above an old house, ships in the
river, at tops of tall spruce trees. Comet Flies Over Old Astoria
House. Comet Sails Over Ships Anchored in the Columbia River
At Astoria, Oregon. Comet Crosses Over Pacific Northwest
Forests.
A man taking his kids to the beach for a clearer view of
the comet allows me a few seconds with a pair of binoculars.
Magnified, Comet Hyakutake resembles a glowing sorcerer's
ball, blue/white at its core.
At midnight I sit on my front porch and stare up above
tall spruce trees that make an oval stage of the sky. Just above
my head is a comet that last raced past Earth when my aborig
inal ancestors were flaking flint. The comet aims straight north,
cutting through the polar orbit of the Big Dipper. I see its tail
stretch over my roof. I am cosmic (enthralled and humble) that
the comet flies over my house. I feel spectral staring up into the
star bright sky to see a flaming fuzzball wth a starched tail stuck
against the celestial backdrop like a bad paste job. I attempt to
grok the span of 20 millennia fore and aft; the last time and next
Comet Hyakutake laps planet Earth.
I think it is remarkable that a comet is in the sky outside
my house and that I am able to see it from my front porch. Much
more of a neighbor than the stars whose addresses are light
years away. Of course the planets are next door and the moon is
like a shed in the backyard.
My favorite postcard: Comet Streaks Over Me! (A Sci Fi
pulp drawng: Tessla snaps and crackles of electricity between
the comet and my exposed pulsing brain.)
The comedian George Carlin hopes The Big Comet that
crashed to earth and probably wiped out the Age of Reptiles
(and created us) wjuld return soon and set the world back to
where it was. My desire is more modest: I would like to ride the
comet through eternity: hail it like a city bus and never get off.
Monday, 3/25
I remain at home today because I spent my babysitting
money on red wne and groceries yesterday. I was graciously
allowed to feed on lamb and delicious shrimp and pesto burritos
made by Connie Kimble at Peter Unananderis party last night.
"Can I crash your party for awhile," I asked Peter after walking to
his house on Astoria's still wcked eastside. I drained a bottle of
Beaujolais and walked home My only contribution to the party
was discovering the comet for the rest of the attendees, espec-