Dec. 3rd, 2002 08:54 am
Snow! [Pretension rating: 7.3]
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muckefuckThis morning I felt exhilarated. Snow was falling in huge soft flakes (actually, large clusters of flakes, as I discerned when they struck my gloves and broke apart) and traffic was light--at least on the side streets. Co-workers who drive have been filtering in with outraged reports of doubled or even tripled transit times. I had a lovely moment of Schadenfreude on the el when the conductor called our attention to the windows just as an airline pilot would so we could marvel at the endless string of cars on Chicago Avenue. "It doesn't get any smoother than this!" he told us; for once, he was right.
I love the quiet that a heavy snow brings. There was one particularly eerie moment when I stepped on the plaza in front of the building where I work and realised I couldn't see another soul and couldn't hear anything besides the hum of distant machinery and my own footfalls. Where was everyone? Some stayed in, some were only delayed. Yet it's striking how easy it is to get the impression that they simply don't exist, that the world is shrinking, dying, as it is progressively buried in snow.
I wonder if that's what death is like: Like lying on your back in a snowstorm. The soft flakes keep falling, blotting out light, muffling sound, cutting you off from the world. There's no pain, only a spreading numbness and something tells you you should get up and go inside, but all your limbs feel so heavy. And besides, there's snow falling on top of you and it's so pretty and so gentle. In fact, the German writer Hans Henny Jahn has written an appealing novella using this metaphor, Die Nacht aus Blei ("The Night of Lead"). Dying is like walking through the city on a cold winter's night when the streets are deserted and the snow keeps falling and falling, blurring the outlines and silencing all noise.
And, yet, far from making me feel melancholy, the snow creates joy. It feels like the world is being offered up strictly for my own enjoyment. If I were a young boy again, I would fully take advantage of that, running around in coat and snow pants until I was sodden and shivering. Now it's enough to stand by the window and simply watch the flakes falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
I love the quiet that a heavy snow brings. There was one particularly eerie moment when I stepped on the plaza in front of the building where I work and realised I couldn't see another soul and couldn't hear anything besides the hum of distant machinery and my own footfalls. Where was everyone? Some stayed in, some were only delayed. Yet it's striking how easy it is to get the impression that they simply don't exist, that the world is shrinking, dying, as it is progressively buried in snow.
I wonder if that's what death is like: Like lying on your back in a snowstorm. The soft flakes keep falling, blotting out light, muffling sound, cutting you off from the world. There's no pain, only a spreading numbness and something tells you you should get up and go inside, but all your limbs feel so heavy. And besides, there's snow falling on top of you and it's so pretty and so gentle. In fact, the German writer Hans Henny Jahn has written an appealing novella using this metaphor, Die Nacht aus Blei ("The Night of Lead"). Dying is like walking through the city on a cold winter's night when the streets are deserted and the snow keeps falling and falling, blurring the outlines and silencing all noise.
And, yet, far from making me feel melancholy, the snow creates joy. It feels like the world is being offered up strictly for my own enjoyment. If I were a young boy again, I would fully take advantage of that, running around in coat and snow pants until I was sodden and shivering. Now it's enough to stand by the window and simply watch the flakes falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.