snow

I got out of class late tonight, 9 o’clock.

Bear with me here. I feel an incredibly sappy ramble coming on.

It’s easier to write about these things than the actual events that are writhing and breaking and splintering through in my life. Later, I tell myself. Later, after it’s all settled. Maybe forgotten so I won’t have to write at all. Some parts written but too damn messy and unresolved to want to see put here.

(Sometimes I imagine X will find this blog, and he will think, but wasn’t this the time when we, when I, and then she, so then we….didn’t she want to stop to write about that? Didn’t she feel that pain at all? He’d put his hand through this X-shaped hole here, puzzled.)

Later, later… after it’s all over. Let me have a moment.

So I got out of class late tonight, like I do every time this day of the week. Got out at 9 o’clock on the dot, so I knew I had just missed the bus.

So I was in no rush. A half hour to kill.

It had just begun to snow again.

It was the kind of snow that dawdled on its way down, so you knew you should too.

Like the same snow that had whipped and cut at your cheeks, the same snow that had crackled and rustled all nasty in your ear through the fake-fur lined hood of your polar-bear coat, had suddenly decided to stop and just…make friends. Let you watch.

Quiet, so you knew you should be too.

I put my hood back down around my neck, let the large, friendly crumbs settle on my hair.

Looked at the closest bus stop…decided to walk to the next one.

I watched my feet for a bit as I tread through the glistening ground. Just enough to give my boots the lightest crunch. None of this ugly slipping business.

I noticed these little dark grey dots flit and sway across the white sheet of the pavement, right where I was about to step. The next time the spots began to jump around again, I looked up. The splay of the streetlight held a crystal spray of white against black sky.

The shadows of snowflakes, I realized. Cool, I thought, looking back at the dancing black on white ground. It's like a negative.

I looked down at my shoulder where flakes rested politely, having meandered down from the sky, unbroken and sparse. Actually delicate and lacey and glassy,…cool. The way you thought snowflakes were supposed to be when you folded your construction paper turned square and started to snip snip little holes with your safety scissors. (Cept I was always a screw-up and would snip snip along the wrong fold. And end up with diamonds and triangles.. lotsa lotsa triangles.. Oh and that one blunt solid kinda.. polygonish.. thing. .)

I kept walking. All the trees were torn down the middle, like masked mimes, one face somber, the other cheeky with whipped cream. Bushes were dripping with thick swirls of it, just downs of it. Snow you think you can pick up and shake like woven fabric.

And everything just shining, twinkling, reflecting off the edges of cut faces, yellow and blue.

I was non-chalantly ‘cool’ing in my head all over, but really I wanted to be like: OHMAGOD LOOK EVERYBODY, EES A WINTA WONDALAND!! (And yes, I'd say it with exactly that accent too.)

I kept it to myself. Campus was so dead anyways. Only the few odd people who put up with late night classes like me. Or maybe there were more of us around, and I just couldn’t hear. Snow really does muffle all. And greys really are kinda muted on a night like this.

And then I started to hear this ding-ding-ding sound behind me, sweet and clear, even through the muffle. Ding-ding-ding. I’m thinking a truck or something. Ding-ding-ding. Car alarm? I turn around and.. it's a train.

A freakin honest to goodness train.

That forgotten steel railtrack running right at the edge of the campus actually had a train on it.

You see, I’ve seen that track every day for two years, and I have never, ever seen a train on it.

And not just any old train. Old, rickety, lots of bits and pieces cargo train. Choo-choo train. Clang-clang-clang train. You get the idea.

I stopped to watch. It cut through the mesh of drifting snow slowly, all exposed, all dingalinging still, shiny lights shining grandly all over its metal. And then it turned round the bend of the tracks and was gone. I’m thinking.. . hallucination?.

Just when I thought it could get no cornier, I came to this little shortcut I always walk though to cut round the corner of the big old engineering building. There’s this big old striking sprawling black maple tree behind that building there that never disappoints. Well only black now cos it’s winter.

I adopted the tree this past fall when, while cutting through in a rush to catch the bus, it made me stop dead in my tracks. It had shed nearly every leaf it had, leaving a golden dark brown net of crooked branches capturing blue sky. Every single leaf that had fallen was this bright bright yellow, and every square inch of the ground was covered with it, not a peek of soil coming through, and then the sun came though and they all just sunshined, amber and opal, and I was like… holy crap.

I had a holy crap moment again right there under my tree tonight. I stepped off the pavement, and stepped onto the path, sunk my feet into the freshly piled up snow. And it was up past the top of my boots, staining my jeans. And I swear to you it was what you always imagined snow to be like growing up in a country with no snow. Five years here now and I hadn’t felt snow quite like that. There were giddy mounds of it, completely light and feathery. It stroked and powdered with every glide of my leg. I floated through.

I got to the end of the path, to the very corner of the building. Trapped between a boulder at my feet and the outside wall off the building at my back. Light from the building on the boulder, thick spider web of my tree above. And what was only muffled before went completely silent. Completely, there’s not a soul here but you, silent. And I looked down at the boulder. These ridged cubes of sparkle dazzle snow had patterned across the rock, having woven though the arrangment of branches above. Water crystals had layered themselves on top of the stone in jagged little towers. And because I’m a geek, a part of me couldn't help but think of all the different phases of ice. And of hydrogen-bonded networks. Except like never seen before. Like brittle equations had suddenly unmasked a tender face. So I bent down to take a closer look. Camera, camera, camera, I was thinking. And though I didn’t want to ruin it, I just had to reach my ungloved hand out and stick my fingers in carefully. And it just collapsed again, like when I was walking, except this time onto my bare skin. And I know you don’t believe me. I know you’re rolling your eyes already because I’ve taken this so far. But it was perfect. Just so perfect . This cold, dusty, soft caress of perfection. Not wet. Not sticky. Perfect.

Looking into skies outside from plane windows, and clouds, really literally clouds, on the ground, all this time. Who knew?

I told you it was corny.