I'm in a Snow Daze

We didn't have class today due to blizzard conditions. So, naturally, I spent my day mostly hibernating and being extremely, almost inexcusably, nonproductive. In the midst of my sleepy day, I ventured outside with some friends and was treated to a sugar frosted world. I was so astounded by the soft piles of snow over everything that I felt that surely I was on the set of a movie. I couldn't believe that I was part of this mystical, peaceful world.

The most striking image from today was the golden statue at the head of Central Park West that sits atop a stone fountain. The woman on the statue was covered with snow, her upward-pointing arm poking through the mist of snowflakes. My breath caught for a moment as I was transported to another time; images of Jacobin peasants flashed through my mind, and I expected to see a sooty youth kneeling in a pile of snow, flakes catching in his eyelashes. It was an otherworldly moment, to say the least.

..........

When you think about it, snow is time-neutral. It not only blankets our earth, it blankets the modernity that constantly surrounds us: streets, buildings, cars, trash cans. It makes us forget all of these things, which we take so heavily for granted, and pulls us down to a primitive level, a level where we are just helpless and amazed human beings. That was an overwhelmingly freeing feeling today. Remember that no matter how advanced we may become, we'll still always be at the mercy of at least one thing: the weather.