ice, rock, dust

At first I was too tired. Or too comfortable. From the couch, I watched my boyfriend Brian as he toted his tripod and camera outside, into the bone-cold darkness to photograph the comet. At first I was okay with this—with observing him as he ventured to observe. There was some guilt on my part that I easily covered with excuses to myself: it’s cold outside I just finished running several miles up a mountain my foot hurts my hair is wet.

But my curiosity got the best of me. What exactly is a comet? How is it different from a meteor? I picked up my phone to sate my curiosity and all it took were three simple words to strike me ravenous, regretful.

ice rock dust

How simple a thing. How simple a thing, like the aching bones and muscles in my body at that moment. How simple a thing like the still-wet hairs at the base of my neck. How simple a thing like my fatigue, the water, the bone, the meat of my body on its journey through life, joy, and grief. All a comet is, is a simple thing of ice dust rock—on a journey.

The closer it gets to us, the more it burns, glows.

By the time my curiosity was somewhat sated, Brian came back in and eventually showed me photographs of the blue-green blur-dot that was the 46P/Wirtanen comet (also known as the Christmas Comet). Even with a 55mm lens, it was no bigger than a star cluster, but blurry from its movement (21,000 mph) and the camera’s shutter speed (f-stop 4.0). It can be viewed with binoculars, just a fuzzy blue-green dot almost indistinguishable from other stars.

A few days before, I was at my local grocery store pharmacy, picking up my prescription for anxiety medication that my doctor agreed to increase in dosage. I didn’t even have to explain why I wanted the increase. I called, asked for it, and got it. Little white crinkly bag of drugs in hand, I felt relief already. Almost giddy. Something was going to calm the tides because it seemed that the moon had given up. Something was going to slow this mind, reel it in closer to Earth.

But then I saw her.

She was getting in line, putting her groceries on the conveyor belt.

I saw my sister Mandy, dead almost 11 months. Same thin. Same gait. Same stage-four jaundiced skin. Same downy, post-chemo dark hair. Same style of winter coat. Same bundled-up.

I quickly turned into a vacant aisle and reeled myself in by staring at a box of pasta.

*

Two days passed and the comet was still a simple thing in the infinity. I just got off work and the sun would be setting in less than a half hour. I gazed up at the Allegheny Front (the edge of the Allegheny Plateau), the ridge that looms over Altoona to the west. The weather community calls it “the blade” because it disrupts storm systems, breaking up clouds, manipulating flurry. What happens up there may not happen eastward, down below. The sun lingers a little longer up there and the sky might even be clear when it’s cloudy in the valley below. I gathered up my camera gear, binoculars, head lamp, and dog and high-tailed it up the ridge, watching the temperature drop on the gauge. We made it just in time to watch the sun bed itself beneath the plateau. The waxing crescent moon jeweled the sky, but briefly. The clouds were blankets unfurling toward us. No comet for us. This left us with the decision to go back to the car or journey onward into the darkness.

*

And I always choose darkness. As a little child, I spent many years anxious and squirming in darkness. On the other side of my bedroom wall, Mandy would be listening to music to fall asleep. An insomniac, I made shadow puppets and talked to myself until she told me to shut up. I asked her questions through the wall: Can a person cough out their heart? What will I do when mom and dad and Aunt Lynn and Aunt Charlie die?

You’ll have me. I’ll be there.

*

Having grown up along the river-side rust belt of Pennsylvania, I continuously sought dark places as my sister slowly exited her orbit around me. I ventured under bridges. Into storm drains. Into the bowels of an abandoned glass factory. Into abandoned mine shafts. All alone. I didn’t have a penchant for maps yet—and didn’t drive yet—so I sought and navigated these dark, solitary places by foot or bike.

But it is darkness that best reckons light. There’s the old adage that you need the darkness in order to see or appreciate the light but what I have learned from so much time seeking dark places is that you need darkness in order to see better in and better appreciate the darkness. Because sometimes, things just get darker. When night hiking or running, I always carry a head lamp in my hip sack, along with hand-warmers, my phone, various lenses, and hiking ephemera. My dog Silas and I often run into the darkness, the gloaming of setting sun often behind us. However, despite the divots in the terrain, despite the briars against my legs and unfamiliar sounds, I rarely use my head lamp. My eyes, they adjust. I can see the difference between mud, gravel, gripping snow, and ice. I see the shadows of the divots and holes. I see the crystal, the sheen of ice, the frozen footprints of others who came before me. I grow brave sometimes. And so sometimes, instead of a ginger gait, I may begin to run. I may even look up at the sky, step after step, walking over the ice.

And sometimes I slip and fall.

*

The next evening was clear. I stepped outside to toss out a batch of burnt cookies for the first Christmas party without my sister. I gazed at the moon gazing down at me. Then remembered that the moon gazes at no one. After doing dishes, I packed up my camera gear and before long, Silas and I were on our way to the plateau again. Slowly driving the mile through the game lands to my dark spot, I saw a fire ball streak across the sky. It was a meteor from the currently active Geminid meteor shower. Before exiting my car, I took inventory: keys, binoculars, head lamp, hand warmers, camera, tripod, phone, and Silas. It was 30 degrees, which isn’t too cold, but the wind had my hands immediately numb and pained. I set up the tripod and fumbled with mounting the camera. I aimed at the moon to gain focus for what is beyond it.

I only do this sometimes. I prefer photographing and observing the smaller worlds around me. How delicate and non-intrusive I must be. How aware I must be that those worlds will act differently or change around me. Be it a snowflake melting from my too-closeness. Or a speckle of dust that moves if I breathe. Or a round of robins, the fledglings screaming my presence. These minute worlds are so vast to me. And sometimes all my wonder and consistency feels futile. My passion, my appreciation—it serves no purpose. You can make whatever sense you want to make of it. Does a person who feels like a void—should they gaze into one?

Once I had my camera what I thought to be focused, I aimed it above and to the right of Orion, where Brian said the comet would be. Slightly annoyed that I couldn’t feel the buttons on my camera for the cold, I adjusted the settings according to what Brian had taught me. He photographs the void. And does it with the same wonder and knowledge that I have for my minute worlds. I snapped long exposures of the dark sky, the moon glimmering to my right. Exposure after exposure, I grew more cold, frustrated, and irritable. I couldn’t feel the binoculars in my coat pocket. I finally felt them and pulled them out. I carefully put my glasses in my pocket as Silas ran wildly in my periphery. I couldn’t find the comet through the binoculars in my shivering hands. I quickly gave up looking for it and continued taking more exposures. During the long exposures, I stepped back and looked up at the sky, no rubber, plastic, or glass between me and the void.

*

When Mandy passed away in my childhood bedroom, my mother was there. She immediately opened the window to release Mandy’s spirit into the cold January darkness. I was 73 miles away by car, on this side of the Allegheny Plateau. And strangely, I was also 73 miles away by wing.

*

One humid summer day when I was a little girl, I was running around the backyard with my best friend. We were play-fighting to the death. Just as I had her trapped against the garage wall, I was going in for the kill as it started to lightly rain. But suddenly, I began screaming, clutching at my neck in fits and spasms. I remember my best friend immediately looking relieved as if I was pretending the rain was my kryptonite but in reality, a handful of wasps took refuge in my shirt and started stinging me. She wasn’t coming to my rescue, so I immediately ran inside, not understanding what was going on myself. Hearing my screams and cries, Mandy ran downstairs and together, she and my mom relieved me of the battered wasps in my clothing. Naturally, I was still inconsolable.

Scream into my tummy, Mandy told me.

And I did—my screams reverberated through the bedrock of her body and into my hands on her back.

*

The day after I stared into the dark, cold void, I finally looked at my photographs, hopeful for at least a streak of meteor. But it was dark frame after dark frame of blurry stars, so undistinguishable that I couldn’t even tell what color they were. The wind that previous evening had moved the camera so much during each exposure, blurring everything. And the moon, it was too bright and blanching. I was texting Brian who wanted to be updated on how the pictures turned out. All I did was bitch about how terrible they looked and how my attempt to photograph the comet was futile. I bitched about how cold I was up there, exposed on the wind-flattened plateau. That the moon was too bright. But then I remembered the moment when I finally stepped back from the technology, pressing of buttons, and the squinting. I adjusted the hat on my head, wiped the wind-tears from my eyes, and put my hands in my coat pockets to warm them. As if on cue, Silas came and sat against my leg. I simply stood there, looking up at everything.

Nothing spectacular happened. I looked down at Silas’ head, then at the ground. I was standing on such a miraculous history of rock and silt, motivated by water and wind. Where I was standing was at one time—hundreds of millions of years ago—the Iapetus Ocean. We have all heard about how when you look up at the stars, you’re looking back in time. Many of the pin-pricks of light you see up there are already extinguished, burned into dust. But their lights—on their own solitary journeys—are still traveling to your eyes. Memories you can see. Or ghosts.

How simple a thing we are, walking on and gazing up at such vastness.

*

Days after Mandy passed away, she was cremated. I did not want to know what time it would happen. I didn’t want to have that moment where I'd stop what I was doing to envision her turning into dust. I wanted no ceremony. I didn’t want to know that I was a dud with a pen in her hand as her sister was burning. I didn’t want to know that I was a sad woman biting her nails at a red light as her sister was burning. I didn’t want to know that I was a couch potato watching repeats of “Family Guy” as her sister was burning to dust.

*

It is December 16th, the day the comet comes closest to the earth before it leaves our view for the next 5.4 years. My sister is exactly 11 months dead. I haven’t made it back up to the plateau to see or photograph the comet. And I won’t be. Standing outside and looking up at the plateau, it is shrouded in what seems to be impenetrable fog. A veil of misty rain curtains the valley below, no end in sight. A rain drop streaks across my glasses.