I was now a house prefect in Hodge Wing with a great big study and a lot of slightly lop-sided wicker armchairs full of cushions. On the walls I hung Medici prints of Manet and some other impressionists and photographs of various Greco-Roman Venuses from museums in Rome. And my bookshelf was full of a wide variety of strange bright-colored novels and pamphlets, all of which were so inflammatory that there would never be any special need for the Church to put them on the Index, for they would all be damned ipso jure--most of them by the natural law itself. I will not name the ones I remember, because some fool might immediately go and read them all: but I might mention that one of the pamphlets was Marx's Communist Manifesto--not because I was seriously exercised about the injustices done to the working class, which were and are very real, but were too serious for my empty-headed vanity--but simply because I thought it fitted in nicely with the decor in which I now moved in all my imaginings.
For it had become evident to me that I was a great rebel. I fancied that I had suddenly risen above all the errors and stupidities and mistakes of modern society--there are enough of them to rise above, I admit--and that I had taken my place in the ranks of those who held up their heads and squared their shoulders and marched into the future. In the modern world, people are always holding up their heads and marching into the future, although they haven't the slightest idea what they think the "future" is or could possibly mean. The only future we seem to walk into, in actual fact, is full of bigger and more terrible wars, wars well calculated to knock our upraised heads off those squared shoulders.
These past few nights, I've been holding up my head and squaring my shoulders and marching into the future at around 11:30. I like to think it's because I'm some kind of rebel, throwing off the conventions of getting to bed early because I have to work in the morning, going out into the dark in pajamas and sandals, and wandering through my neighborhood streets with my nose pointed to the heavens.
I'm not protesting racial injustices or social inequities or the imprisonment of immigrant children at the borders of the United States. Don't get me wrong. All of those things are important and should be protested, loudly, every day. My nightly excursions, however, are more cosmic in nature. A search for something larger than myself. An attempt to reach out and touch something that hasn't been glimpsed by human eyes for close to 6,800 years.
I am Neowise hunting.
And there is something rebellious, or ludicrous, in a middle-aged father of two trooping through the night in his PJs, looking for a close encounter of the comet kind. Normal guys don't do that kind of thing, unless they are peeping toms, thieves, drug dealers, or addicts. The first time I did it, I kept looking around to make sure that I wasn't being observed. I didn't want to be arrested.
Now, I've realized that I am alone in the moonless after-twilight. Nobody cares about my passage. I am simply part of the night. When a car goes by, I step into the shadows of a tree or house. Disappear. And, I have come to realize something else, as well: Bigfoot could exist. He could walk right down the middle of the street behind me, and no one would notice. Because we live in a wonder-blind world.
I expected to find other Neowise pilgrims in backyards, gazing up at the stars for the possibility of seeing something that won't pass our way again for almost seven millennia. The past four nights, I have not encountered another living soul. Instead, I see plasma-screen televisions flickering and glowing behind drawn curtains. The first night, I saw fingers of aurora borealis crawling across the heavens. The second night, the Big Dipper was so close that I could have taken a drink from its tilting pan. Last night, it was raining so hard that tree branches were bending over and praying to the ground. And I was the only witness.
So, yes, Bigfoot could exist. He could live next door, and nobody would realize it. Because most people have lost their impulse to chase mystery and miracle. Ezekiel saw a fiery wheel in the sky and became a prophet. There's a fiery wheel in the sky right now, and a rerun of Everybody Loves Raymond is more important. Nobody wants to be a prophet.
It's cloudy tonight, so I will not be Neowise hunting. Instead, about 11:30, I will slip on my sandals, quietly open my front door, and cross into darkness. Bigfoot will be there waiting. We will go on a stroll together, listen for the skitter of rabbit, flute of owl, mewl of coyote. Bigfoot's head will scrape the clouds, and he may reach up and scoop his way to stars. And there will be Neowise, climbing toward morning. Its tail will singe his fingertips, and he'll press them between his lips, suck on them.
They are old friends, these two. Twin astonishments. They have existed since the beginning, when God created heaven and earth, spoke them into being. Let there be Bigfoot. Let there be Neowise. And they were set into motion, stretching their long legs across space and time.
We just need to pull the scales from our eyes, open our front doors, and step into wonder.
For the miracle of Neowise and Bigfoot, Saint Marty gives thanks.
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