Chasing the Dog Star

 

Editor's note: Originally published in Fall, 2022

One of my earliest memories from childhood is a visit that my parents made to a family friend. The visit ran long, and during our stay, a thunderstorm rolled through the Willamette Valley. I remember the chaos--the flashes of light and the shaking of the house with each roll of thunder. I must have fallen asleep; by the time we left the house, the storm was gone, and in it’s place, a brilliant starry sky. I can still see it 25 years later. This was only the first moment I remember the stars. As I grew older I learned their names. From my Dad I learned to locate them in the vastness of the sky, and even how to use them to navigate.

One morning a month or so back, I woke up around 3am. Unable to get back to sleep, I rose, and went out to the yard, to look at the sky. There were the Pleiades, and beneath it was Mars, both hanging silently in the cool early-morning sky. I had expected neither, and being half asleep at the time, that peaceful scene felt like a dream. For several nights after, I stayed up as late as I could, so as to catch a glimpse of my salmon-colored friend, silently watching me from millions of miles away. The weeks went on, and the winter constellations began to make their faces more and more known. A couple weeks later, I awoke after having fallen asleep on our porch swing to find the familiar shape of Orion just over the horizon, shimmering low in the eastern sky. The end of summer had arrived.

The stars have a way of making one feel less alone, though I’m not sure how to pinpoint exactly why. Perhaps it’s their consistency, and distance. They appear at dusk, and disappear at dawn, making their rounds, parading across the heavens like the hands of a celestial clock, flickering like candles as they fade at the horizon. I met a young man picnicking with his girlfriend at a park one evening while I waited for Antares to appear, and we got to talking. During our conversation, he commented how some people have a personal relationship with the stars. It was an interesting way of phrasing it, but I don’t think its inaccurate. Sometimes it does feel like a relationship.

I continued my evening star walks, and almost every night I found a new star or planet. It was like a scavenger hunt, a quest to meet mysterious figures hiding in the back rooms of some ancient library. One night, while looking at a digital star chart, I advanced the clock to around 6am, when a new circle emerged above the horizon, larger than any other, and flashing on the computer screen with an unrivaled intensity, barely poking over the horizon for two hours before its light was consumed by the coming day. I was intrigued.

Sirius: the dog star, the brightest star in the sky. I had heard of it, but couldn’t recall having seen it myself. I tried to imagine what it would look like: dimmer than Jupiter but brighter than Vega, though by how much I wasn’t sure. I needed to see that star for myself. It would be the crown jewel that would make my impromptu summer project complete. I had a two hour window just before dawn--bad news for a night owl--but an upcoming morning shift would have me up at the right time.

The day before my early morning was cloudy and cool. A west wind off the ocean pushed the thin haze of wildfire smoke out of the sky, and by the mid afternoon, the clouds were beginning to dissipate. As it grew dark, the night sky was clearer than I had seen it in months.  It felt like walking across a stage the night before a play opened: everything was in order. At 6:00 the next morning, my alarm went off.

There were no clouds obscuring the eastern horizon, no haze. But, as it turned out, it wasn’t clouds I would need to worry about. While my star chart had shown several stars still be visible at six, as I stepped out onto the deck, I discovered, to my dismay, that it was already light. Jupiter was not yet snuffed out, but there were no stars. Not ever Sirius in all its alleged glory could shine through the sunlight ducking over the horizon. I walked to the highest spot in the neighborhood hoping that perhaps it was just hiding behind the trees, but to no avail. I would need to get up earlier.A few days later I woke up before my alarm. I just about went back to sleep, when something in my head clicked. I checked the clock: 5:30am, and I was up. Somehow, I’d woken myself up at the perfect time. I got dressed and stepped out onto the deck.

The sky was clear again, but it was still dark. It only took a second to spot it: hiding in the branches of a hawthorn tree, a brilliant light, flickering with color: Sirius. I walked up the hill, and stood once more at the highest point at our neighborhood, just as dawn was breaking. “Nice to meet you,” I murmured as the coming day began to drown out its fainter brethren.

I wanted to say that my project is complete, but the days are already getting shorter. As winter creeps in, Sirius will rise earlier, and with it, no doubt, stars I had never stopped to admire before. Finding Sirius wasn’t the end of my project at all; it was the beginning.

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Kramer Paper Online - Vol. LXXVII

Book Review: "I Who Have Never Known Men" by Jacqueline Harpman

 I Who Have Never Known Men is a relatively unheard of Belgian novel--first published in French in 1995--that made its way across the Atlantic in the late 2000s, most recently retranslated into English in May of 2022. Perhaps it is how recently it was released, but this book was surprisingly difficult to find. In addition the difficulty in finding it, the book itself is absolutely bizarre, reminding me of a fever dream. Like the written version of a Salvador Dali painting, Harpman depicts a desolate landscape, a world totally devoid of meaning or explanation. From a brief description, it may sound like a typical dystopian novel: thirty-nine women and a young girl--the narrator--are imprisoned in a cage in an underground bunker. They have enough food, water, and shelter, though they are deprived of many necessities they once knew. They are not allowed to die, touch each other, or defy the orders of the guards that constantly watch them. When an alarm goes off, the guards flee, and the women are let loose on a world very different from the one they expected. While many dystopias focus on bringing down an authoritarian government, the force that imprisoned the women is never seen, let alone confronted, which only adds to the unsettling tone of the book. The narrator--simply known as the Child--has no memory of the world before, never develops into a woman, and has no understanding of societal norms, leaving her with absolutely no context on what it means to be a woman--or human for that matter--in modern society. Without any sort of moral upbringing, ideas that would abhor us do not seem to phase her, and Harpman uses the child to examine and confront western values to a degree that at times gets incredibly disturbing. The Child’s lack of social context gives her an almost robotic view of the world and people around her. The characters are seldom fleshed out, but this choice seems deliberate. Each character plays a single critical role in the feverish thought experiment that Harpman creates, and we are only told the details needed for this to succeed. Harpman was born to a Jewish Family who fled to Morocco during World War II, and later worked as a psychoanalyst, all of which may have influenced her writing. It poses questions, and gets the gears turning, and I did enjoy the surreal world she creates. Yet I’m not sure how to recommend it, or even if I should. The book is at times very nihilistic and is at times incredibly upsetting and disturbing, and the Child’s treatment of certain issues is borderline-callous. I Who Have Never Known Men is at once awful, hauntingly beautiful, heartbreaking, depressing and at times downright distressing. It’s a rough ride, though it isn’t one I regret taking. I would, however, advise proceeding with caution.

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Kramer Paper Online - Vol. LXXVII

Crawdads and Comets

Daisies grow on the shore of a surprisingly clear

 Timothy Lake in Summer, 2022. Mt. Hood can

 be seen over the ridge of trees across the lake.         

    It’s been said that you can never go home: your memory of a place will never be what you find when you return. The truth of these words rang especially true during the Covid Pandemic, as the whole world held its breath, and this mutual tension permeated every aspect of life. But to be “home” so to speak, everything need not be the same: so long as it remains familiar. My family treasures the outdoors, and with campgrounds still open, in July 2020 we decided to return to one of our favorite getaways: Timothy Lake, a large reservoir in the Cascades maintained by Portland General Electric as water storage for their hydro-electric projects. Its shores are lined by campgrounds, huckleberry bushes and gravel beaches for swimming. Massive stumps, ghosts of the forest that once stood in the lake bed, still stand under the surface, intact after nearly half a century. From the right angle, you can see stunning views of Mt. Hood. The Drive up 26 that summer was no less magical, climbing out of the canyon carved by Camp Creek, towards the summit. Mt. Hood slid in and out of view as the road curves around hills, becoming larger and larger each time. 

    That July afternoon, the lake appeared the same, but things definitely felt different. Signs warned people not to gather too close, and advised masks. The sense of concealed hysteria

was fainter here, but not fully extinguished. Timothy Lake, while somewhat remote, is close enough to Portland to have cell service, and with it, news updates, and the emotional whiplash from conflicting reports sharing both optimism and pessimism about the situation. Yet there is a certain peace in a place like Timothy Lake, regardless of what’s going on outside. Families still gathered on the lakeshore and chatted amongst themselves. Boats meandered across the sparkling water and children swam in the various lagoons and bays. As dusk fell, a ukulele began to play, smoke from cooking fires filled the air, and children returned to the lake to stalk crawdads.

    I took note of this last bit, and on the second night I grabbed a flashlight and went down to try my own luck. Sure enough, there were dozens of crawdads, using the cover of night to evade predators and hunt prey of their own. I wandered down the lake shore almost as far as the dam, only stopping when I came to a family gathered around a campfire. As I approached, someone got up from the fire and began wandering my way: perhaps I had gotten a bit too close. I turned around and headed back along the beach trail towards camp. After a minute or so, I looked back, assuming that the pursuer had turned around, but the flashlight was still following me. I decided to quit running. If this guy needed to talk to me, so be it. 

Comet Neowise, seen from the suburbs of
Portland, Summer, 2020

    I greeted my supposed pursuer, with a “Good evening.” He replied in kind, then added “Hey, did you see the comet?” I looked where he was pointing. Amid the stars was a faint dusty object. During the day I would have thought it to be a distant contrail, but it was night, and the object wasn’t moving. My heart leapt. I thanked him and like a child, sprinted all the way back to camp, where I breathlessly stormed the trailer--waking my family in the process--and said something about a comet. They were none too happy to be disturbed, but they went back with me, and together we took in this rare sight. They were glad to see it, and even after they returned to camp, I stayed by the lake, and watched it set behind the hills. When I returned home, I made two trips into the countryside where the sky was darker to photograph the comet: once alone, and once with a friend.

    A couple of years have gone by, and things have changed, some for better and some for worse. This year we returned to the lake. There were fewer people--though it was later this time, and the place still wasn’t lonely. Children were still playing in the lagoons, and boats still slide across the sparkling waves. Each return trip feels different, but at the same time it feels familiar. The night sky was as beautiful as ever, though there was no comet. It has long since turned around and headed back from whence it came, going about its existence. Some day, it will return. The world it sees then will be different, but some things will no doubt still be the same. 

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Kramer Paper Online - Vol. LXXVII

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