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Drifting away.
It started snowing almost three hours ago, and it's still coming in fast. This is the first big storm of the season for me: my family was in Puerto Rico during the Christmas blizzard late last month, and we were fortunate we'd scheduled our return flight for a few days after the worst of it hit, so there wasn't a big delay getting back to our own beds. We loved the snorkling and beach combing and tropical insects, but we were kind of sad we'd missed the snow. At least, I was. And now it's here and back.
There have been a few little flurries and falls, nothing lasting more than an hour or so, and never more than a couple of inches at a time. This one's supposed to be almost eight or nine inches, cold enough it'll stick around for a while, impressive enough the ploughs just went past to clear the streets for the buses and cabs. Last year when Snowmageddon was about to hit Pittsburgh and I saw some ploughs clearing the streets, I jumped in excitement because I'd never seen such a thing. It's not a big surprise to me I haven't seen them yet around here, since New York is so much warmer than Pittsburgh it's that much harder for snow to stick to the streets. New York is the warmest cold place I've ever lived, and that itself is enough to make me want to go back to Pittsburgh some days, since that's a place where it never feels like fall in the middle of January.
But there are moments when the middle of fall back East makes me feel like I'm in winter out West, empty trees and covered skies, but only if I'm watching. Once wind picks up I can't forget where I am. It's not that there's no wind out West, more that when it blows there's water to go with it - wind and rain travel hand-in-hand in Northern California. Here, walking down the streets or through the parks during the lulls between snowfalls, the wind blows dry, cracking lips and shredding fingers. And I like that, too. When it's cold and dry, all I need to do is figure out how to keep myself warm or decide if I want the cold on me. I can bundle myself up in scarves and hats and gloves and an extra undershirt, or I can just put on a jacket and leave the rest for another day. It's easy to shuck off wet clothing and change into dry ones, and sometimes I've gone out just to get wet for the feeling of putting on dry clothing later, it's that delicious a feeling. Getting warm, shucking off the cold, that's not so easy, but sometimes the cold doesn't stay with me, just resting on top of my skin to get brushed off as soon as I get indoors and make something warm to drink.
Wind is like winter back home, but when it snows, there's no escaping that. Snow makes the world very real even when it turns it into something out of a dream. Right now I can't see far down the streets under my window, just the buildings around me. There's an apartment house two blocks away that has trees done up in lights that turn on every night and last until morning, and they shut down almost two hours ago. With that landmark missing, it takes me a moment to figure out where I'm looking, what that might be. It's like the world is blanketed in fog, coming in on its little cat feet to wrap around the buildings and keep them secret from each other. Snow doesn't make anything a secret; snow makes things more real. And when they're missing, not here, or far away from you, snow makes them much more real then, more real than if snow wasn't here at all.
Just the way snow makes itself so real, there's nothing you can do except watch it come down and cover the world.
There have been a few little flurries and falls, nothing lasting more than an hour or so, and never more than a couple of inches at a time. This one's supposed to be almost eight or nine inches, cold enough it'll stick around for a while, impressive enough the ploughs just went past to clear the streets for the buses and cabs. Last year when Snowmageddon was about to hit Pittsburgh and I saw some ploughs clearing the streets, I jumped in excitement because I'd never seen such a thing. It's not a big surprise to me I haven't seen them yet around here, since New York is so much warmer than Pittsburgh it's that much harder for snow to stick to the streets. New York is the warmest cold place I've ever lived, and that itself is enough to make me want to go back to Pittsburgh some days, since that's a place where it never feels like fall in the middle of January.
But there are moments when the middle of fall back East makes me feel like I'm in winter out West, empty trees and covered skies, but only if I'm watching. Once wind picks up I can't forget where I am. It's not that there's no wind out West, more that when it blows there's water to go with it - wind and rain travel hand-in-hand in Northern California. Here, walking down the streets or through the parks during the lulls between snowfalls, the wind blows dry, cracking lips and shredding fingers. And I like that, too. When it's cold and dry, all I need to do is figure out how to keep myself warm or decide if I want the cold on me. I can bundle myself up in scarves and hats and gloves and an extra undershirt, or I can just put on a jacket and leave the rest for another day. It's easy to shuck off wet clothing and change into dry ones, and sometimes I've gone out just to get wet for the feeling of putting on dry clothing later, it's that delicious a feeling. Getting warm, shucking off the cold, that's not so easy, but sometimes the cold doesn't stay with me, just resting on top of my skin to get brushed off as soon as I get indoors and make something warm to drink.
Wind is like winter back home, but when it snows, there's no escaping that. Snow makes the world very real even when it turns it into something out of a dream. Right now I can't see far down the streets under my window, just the buildings around me. There's an apartment house two blocks away that has trees done up in lights that turn on every night and last until morning, and they shut down almost two hours ago. With that landmark missing, it takes me a moment to figure out where I'm looking, what that might be. It's like the world is blanketed in fog, coming in on its little cat feet to wrap around the buildings and keep them secret from each other. Snow doesn't make anything a secret; snow makes things more real. And when they're missing, not here, or far away from you, snow makes them much more real then, more real than if snow wasn't here at all.
Just the way snow makes itself so real, there's nothing you can do except watch it come down and cover the world.