and yes, the meteorologists prove to be something better than the charlatans i’ve always suspected them to be. it snows. it’s comes down and the dots connect at a 45 degree angle, then 38, then 52. a man with a clear garbage bag is outside my window looking into the now halo topped garbage cans. there is snow in his mustache and a quarter inch built up on his round forest green shoulders. collecting bottles in a blizzard, all shivers and hopeful initiative. for my part it’s all warmth and robed comfort, pleased i need not venture out at all. saturday afternoon in january and i sit snug while everything shifts. kittens get comfortable. coffee gives way to newcastle. the news gives way to art tatum. and, of course, grey and beige give way to white for a while.

announce by all the trumpets of the sky,
arrives the snow, and, driving o’er the fields,
seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils farm-house at the garden’s end.
the sled and traveller stopped,
the couriers feet delayed,
all friends shut out, the housemates sit
around the radiant fireplace
enclosed in a tumultuous privacy of storm.
-ralph waldo emerson

though i love the man i never really liked his poetry.

fire falling from the sky in streamers, bug-eyed characters bursting into flames before me… work on the nonist activity book continues. today it’s numbers, 11:1 in which the lord is displeased by ingrate complainers and burns them all to cinders. “hmmmm, should i make this eye hanging out of it’s socket or just make it a dripping blob burst from the heat? does this crouching figure look tormented enough? i mean really in excruciating pain like his fillings are melting? should this toddler be skinless, nothing but a twist of tendons and soft undeveloped muscle? perhaps. a tiny pile of flaming bones? maybe.” it’s good fun, almost like i have the truly wonderful and miraculous power of god myself.

so what’s going with the rest of you today? anything interesting?

a sparrow enters the tree,
whereon immediately
a snow lump thrice his own slight size
descends on him and showers his head and eyes,
and overturns him.
-thomas hardy.

i have no connection to snow, no fond memories, no evocation of childhood particulars as i understand other to have. a few snow forts i suppose, though what other snow suited kids might have occupied them with me i can’t recall. no snow men. no sleds. i remember playing a game we called “dive” in which we’d throw the football as nearly out of one another’s reach as possible. that was best played in snow i suppose. i remember thinking i had frostbite in my foot once. taking my boot and sock off while sitting in a snowdrift before hopping home. i remember new york closed down by snow. 94? 96? cars were like hobbled mastodons. the streets were full of cross country skiers. that was nice. otherwise, nothing comes to mind.

the snow far off on the pine
nesting into the needles
like addicts into their fix.
The mailbox as stiff as a soldier
but wearing a chef’s hat.
-anne sexton

i forgive the addicts / fix imagery considering how long ago she wrote it.

there is an undeniable pleasure in the big snowstorm though isn’t there? what is it? the beauty of it? the novelty? the sudden contrast, making your little new york hovel feel cozy and warm rather than cramped and suffocating? the fact that people disappear from the streets? the slow down? is it the excuse the snowstorm offers, to stay in, to shut down, to sit back, to reflect? is it instinctual? passed down from the days when the appearance of snow changed the odds instantly, sending us hominids hooting and hollering into caves and lukewarm crevasses? maybe our systems were flooded with chemicals when we secured safe haven back then and no one bothered to alert todays receptors to the existence of gortex and cashmere? ah who cares, it’s nice any which way.

if it’s not snowing where you are, see for yourself. times square isn’t too pretty is it? ah well, best i could find. 

out of the bosom of the air
out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken
over the woodlands brown and bare
over the harvest-fields forsaken
silent and soft and slow
descends the snow.
-longfellow.

i’ve gotta get back to destroying those who displease the lord from my cozy seat here. what’s the story for the rest of you fine folks? upstate must be getting pounded. i’m sure in spain it’s still semi-warm. germany? london? tuscany? anywhere?