First Snow

Snow has this settling quality. While it falls, before it gets too thick and untrodden, you have time to identify exactly where you want to be and get there, merrily all the way of course. Those drifting snowflakes and untouched quiet, white streets are so majestic and calming. Once you arrive, you unload your reinforcements - reading materials, a bottle of wine, some groceries and/or takeout menus from a few restaurants with a staunch work ethic - and you marinate. You'd better be happy with where you land 'cause you might be in there for awhile. And that's all the fun, settling in for an undetermined period of time, indulging dramatically in one of the last survivalist rituals in a society of twitter and on demand everything.

Inside your cocoon you amuse yourself with whatever is around - a lover, npr, a recipe you've wanted to try and have managed to scrounge up the most obscure ingredients for, that organizational project you've put off, a writing project you've also put off. The point is that you have time, more than you've had this entire season, and that's a luxury. For me the most rewarding luxury time can gift is the ability to sit still and let my mind slow and sharpen, to take deeper more fulfilling breaths, to let sufficient oxygen flow to my brain, enough to experience more complete, compelling thoughts and feelings.

In moving from rote behavior to moving and thinking with intention and awareness, my creativity comes out. I start to notice the small things, the quiet things that for me hold the most inspiration. Like how striking my blue plastic wrapped NYT looked all nestled in the snow atop my stoop this morning, the only trace of humanity in the heavy booted footprints that seemed to have come and gone in the same imprints on the stairs; how one can note the relationship status of each neighbor by counting the number of snow-caked boots and umbrellas discarded outside their front door, and how two sets of boots and a girly hat hung outside A1 may mean that my lonely neighbor might be coming out of his funk; how one weeks worth of clothing unceremoniously thrown onto the settee in the corner resembles the shape of an old lovers body in his favorite sleeping position, a mass of black hosiery simulating the bend at his waist, a grey sweater impersonating a tucked arm.

It turns out that my hibernation here might not last that long. One thing the city does efficiently is plow and salt the streets in a timely manner. I could keep the brunch plans I've made and I probably will. But for now I'll pretend I have no recourse, no other choice but to stay cooped up here, settled in indefinitely, for a little while longer.