He's lost, staring out at the snow falling, falling, silently falling. He's focused on the street light mid-block, its milk-white globe glowing larger than real, reaching into the surrounding snowfall to create a moon of umbrated light. The snow can do this–change things–make the normal abnormal, the ordinary extraordinary. It could stop cars, close schools, disrupt businesses, slow everyone and everything down…like him…like now.

He's been standing like this for nearly 20 mintes, focusing on a tree limb, topped with a cushion of snow, the contrast between the black branch and its white covering, then the street light, of course, then a neighbor's car, slowly vanishing. then the empty porch of the house across the street, with the yellow glow of a lamp squeezing through the drawn drapes of the living room window, trying to see its way out into the snow.

That was the thing. The snow drew him, drew everyone, he supposed. The abnormality of a snowfall beckoned him out. See, the world doesn't have to be the way it is, day after day. Something so simple, so basic–frozen water, uniquely formed, weightless, frozen water–so benign, can upend things for a while, can silence the world, can say, "Ha!," and sit back and watch us all flounder and give up…and stand like he's standing, silent like the snow.

He feels himself emptying. He empties as the street fills. He experiences this as a good thing, not unlike having a cold or the flu and being forced into bed to lay there and be with things he otherwise would avoid.

No, that's not it; this is a forced pause in his life, yes, but not inner confrontation. This is inner stilling. Very different. Why? Is it the difference between the heat of fever and the stilling chilling of snow and ice? He's heard that freezing to death is pleasant, like drifting off to sleep on a winter's afternoon when the shoveling's done and the ball game's over and the hot chocolate's gone.

Stillness, his favorite word. That's what this about. Stillness. The stillness of snow.

 Text and image © 2010 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.