February 25, 2013
Greetings from within the glass,
Over a hundred years ago a man named Erwin Perzy perfected
the snow globe, those dust collecting tchotchkes with tiny scenes of endless
winter. Three generations later his
family still makes them, hundreds of thousands every year. Even with the endless list of far more
interactive distractions, people still shake them, turn them, roll them, and
then set them right and watch the miniature ecozone evolve.
From swirling chaos to quiet harmony.
Snowstorms have wreaked havoc around the country. Closing
schools cancelling flights.
Meteorologist hurrying to predict the next paralyzing layer
of cold before their competition can call it.
And now the snow storms even have names.
The snowfall on this morning is too gentle to have a name,
which is ironic. It seems the kind of
snow you would want your kids to play in and it’s almost too bad it doesn’t
have a name. “Go out and play with Cosmo
the Snowstorm”
Nature challenges man’s plans with snow and ice and
wind. Trucks rush to push it back,
people slash with shovels and snowblowers and point little tractors to stave
off winter’s assault. In the end it is
always a draw. Nature can bring more
snow, man can push it aside. Nature
gives way by allowing it to all melt eventually, the last laugh on mankind.
This morning there is none of that. It is too early for the world to care much
about what the weather is doing. The man
who delivers the newspapers grinds into the unplowed places near the mail
boxes, fishtailing in the new layer of winter.
Other than that the people here are sleeping, the snow is irrelevant to
their dreams.
I woke with a whirling list in my head. Words and numbers that refused to settle into
any shape that I could put in order.
Like trying to capture a crumb floating in your coffee, chasing
something that is too small to be bothered with but must be bothered with.
So I abandon sleep and push through the process of being
awake. I scratch the dry places and rub
my eyes and absorb my coffee. The
chaotic cloud slows but the gap between my synapse is still too large to
connect cogent thought. There is only
one solution. I lace up my shoes and
head for the outside.
Outside it is still winter.
I pull on the layers, tug a hat down over my ears, step out into the
morning. Under the crust of new snow the roadbed is slick. I try to run so my feet won’t slip, an
awkward flatfooted choreography.
The morning is dim, cold.
The window in the garage is frosted over, a work of art waiting for
someone to scratch a crude heart into. I jog to the street and look up at the
white dome above me. More snow spirals
toward me. The moisture in my eyes freezes
into a scrim.
It is quiet. There is
no sound except the noise my breathing makes, made louder in my head by the hat
tight over my ears. I am barely aware of the crunch and squeak of snow under my
feet, my running shoes stamping my progress in the white crust.
I trudge along the shoulder, my body tense from the cold,
the air chilling my teeth, teasing my lungs into little coughs. I dream of a warmer place, a sandy beach,
where footprints are washed by surf, not filled in by frozen flakes.
Wind cuts commas in the snow. Small drifts build up in seemingly random
banks, a design perhaps only God is aware of.
The trees stand in futile silence, their arms empty, stretching up in
the grey, barely making a contrast against the early morning sky.
Here are deer tracks along the shoulder. I imagine the doe stopping at the mail box to
look at the headlines. She left the
paper there for someone else to worry about.
Slowly I settle into the cadence my body is willing for, my
arms and legs work almost forgotten. The
rhythm helps jiggle and settle the things in my head into an order, each
thought fitting gently against another, not really interlocking. After a few miles I can almost make sense of
the bedlam bouncing between my ears.
To the east the sun turns the horizon into peach
sherbet. I have been running long enough
for night to give up holding us in darkness.
Soon the sun peels back a tiny space in the snow clouds to say good
morning and then lets the curtain fall back.
The snow drifts down from the glass globe around me.
I stop running and walk up the lane to a field I will cross
to go home, break into fresh powder, the cold cotton fluff piling up on my
shoes. Empty soccer nets stand in proud
poses in the frozen field, braced in permanent attention.
I stand still for a moment and look up.
Snow floats slowly toward me, perfectly choreographed, no
matter which angle you look the flakes seem to be impeccably spaced. They are falling as if there is no hurry,
there’s already enough white on the ground. Drift down, choose the place where
they will rest against one another, not interlocking but in order, in their
place.
Perhaps somewhere someone has shaken the world so that the
snow will swirl and then settle, so that I can watch the flakes glide toward
me, soft and quiet and in some order science could not describe.
I close my eyes and feel the frozen down melt against my
face. Inside my head the words and numbers and images begin to sift into place
too. Not at all orderly but at least in
places I can see them, make some sense of them.
Where I can scoop them into my hands and shape them into what I
need. Like this.
Hope this finds you letting things float into place,
David
Copyright © 2013 David Smith
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