Snow Mind

By SOHO JOE

“For now I am a willing prisoner in this house
A sympathizer with the anarchic cause of snow

—Billy Collins

For a city kid, the recent snowfalls in the Delaware Valley here were exciting. City snow is nothing like this. Yeah, it’s just as soft and fluffy at first as the upstate variety, but it’s less friendly and stable. If it sticks around at all, it turns gray, forms slush the same color as the street, and tricks even veteran pedestrians. You step off the curb thinking you’re going to hit the ground, but you’re really three to six inches above it, as your shoes and socks soon discover. If you’re not careful, this awakening is followed by an even ruder one, when the crosstown bus drives through one of these mirages. Now you know why everyone wears black in New York City.

Another big difference between city snow and rural snow is that even if there is a decent snowfall in the city, a lot of people don’t have a good a window to look out at it from. I haven’t seen anything important happen outside of our windows in New York in years. This has a lot to do with the fact that our windows open onto a courtyard between buildings, which don’t seem to change their appearance that much with the seasons, unless you’re into shades of brick. There are a few trees and bushes out there—but I wouldn’t call it Currier and Ives material. Anyway, our cats can sit staring out of the our windows for half an hour, but I have never managed to look out for more than the few seconds it takes to identify which TV show the person who lives in Mrs. Barnes’ old apartment is watching.

That’s why it felt so good to have a real window to watch the snowfall from. Upstate. Frankly, I was just blown away by the beauty of it all. I sat and stared as the snow did its silent work, slowly changing the color and contours of everything in sight. Across the street, a neighbor was vigorously shoveling snow off his roof, reminding me of the roof rake I’d just assembled for this purpose. But I just stared. The snow rake lay quietly awaiting me on the porch for whenever I snapped out of it.

The phone rang. It was a friend of mine, Hank, another city kid. “What’s up?” I asked him. “Nothin’,” Hank said, “I’m just sitting here at the kitchen table, staring out at the snow.” I understood.

Looking out at the altered landscape, those big meaning of life questions I’m always asking don’t seem that urgent anymore. They’re just not as pressing now that I have a decent window to watch the snow from. (Maybe philosophy arose from guys who just didn’t have a good enough view).

My neighbor’s finished shoveling off his roof and is probably into his second stack of pancakes by now. The thought of this wakes me from my reverie. Maybe, I think, it’s time to tear myself away from all of this mad beauty and try out the roof rake. Because if the roof caves in there won’t be any windows to look out of, and then there’ll be a lot of questions to answer!