Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Snow

Snow is falling. It's falling in large flakes, the kind that are soft and silent and beautiful. It is magic out there, reminding me of magic that seems to have gone from inside of me. It's as if I'm looking out into the snowy street and into a past fog of emotional imagination that most of my life consisted of. What is left, besides the memories? I have memories of things that never were, of scenes that were described in books and media and given life inside my head. And the snow is falling in this grungy city now, for real. It is 1:36 in the morning and it's really happening. But the relentless imagination continues unfulfilled, creating more lively realities in me with such desperately energetic longing. It's why sometimes my body feels like a husk.

Time for me is not linear. Change comes sideways and from the sky, too. It's as if moving forward in time and the realities that come from a particular moment in time are separate from the space in which we have maneuvered ourselves. And so I've been waiting for the time when I will be put into the reality that I've been dreaming of, where I can expand into my new body and circumstance comfortably, out of this inconvenient, crowded meandering.

I have conceded, at least intellectually, that in order to live an imagined reality I must create it and build it. It would be so much simpler if there were only one inside my head. But the falling snow lands anywhere it wants and it tumbles, it tumbles as it falls. Flakes collide, meld, melt, freeze, crystallize, break apart, drift, tumble, tumble. They fall where they will.

In the sodium glow of the street lights the snow falls on cars parked along the sidewalks. The dirty sidewalks and their trash and litter are covered by the snow, undisturbed in the night. I see romances, crimes and violence, mystery in generous helpings. Most of all, at least tonight, I see adventures. These adventures are marked by old lusts and outward urges that I thought had gone away, but have risen to the surface as if unchanged by time. Fresh. They are marked by a blank vision of the future and abandonment of the past. What is left is pure fire, hearty and steadfast. I can feel it in my chest so clearly now. There's a real sense of power.

With these visions I remember that I have forgotten the fact of freewill. I act without an acknowledgement or awareness of the will inside the things I do. These things are called decisions. I've almost forgotten I have that power. To decide.

And suddenly the vision is gone. My eyes were following one of the flakes of snow and it became one of the mass. It's just snow falling, precipitation. It will be frustrating to pick up my laundry tomorrow. I'll have to get up earlier than I'd like so that I have time to finish my school work. I must remember to go to a cash machine on the way to the Laundromat. I should also make time to visit the Registrar's office. I know how hard it is for me to get up so I should force myself to sleep now.

I secretly hope that the snow will still be falling in the morning.