365: 65 – 06.03.09
It snowed here yesterday. Gigantic flakes, as big as my entire eye, in clumps the size of small birds. It was almost scary, how fiercely cold it suddenly was, how blindingly white. It felt like being in another country or traveling through time. January, 1993. Somewhere in the city, I am smaller, cold, looking out a window, ignorant that another version of myself is out there somewhere, speeding along in a vehicle with friends I couldn’t imagine having, to an apartment in a city where I would never believe I’m still living. Vancouver translated by the weather into a monochrome model of itself, a ceramic Christmas display for sale in the back of a Family magazine.
Oddly, even as the clouds blotted out anything farther than a block away, yesterday’s dry blizzard had me feeling more connected to the rest of the world, as the entire weekend was filled with reports of freak weather from friends all over this corner of the globe. San Fransisco mildly buried, Seattle laughing out in lightning and unexpected cold, cascades of vintage soap flake perfection drifting through New York. It let me wake feeling lighter today, glad that the trees were still heavy with thick cotton drifts of white, even as everywhere else the streets were melting back to damp black, leaving the sidewalks naked of everything but the usual ragged polka dots of spit out chewing gum.
Because of the snow I witnessed a beautiful thing today: flakes falling powdery out of a tree’s branches, (limbs sketched in charcoal strokes against the downtown morning), like a small, perfect, localized winter, the circular width of a dream.