Another Blog in the Dark (Blog Post #2)

Friday 1/25/13, 9 pm

Today, I fully noticed (though not for the first time) the way the snow here in Pittsburgh glitters as it falls. Some of it falls into drifts, while other flakes lay gently on top of the rest, sunlight or moonlight shimmering against their delicate edges.  Each one of these glittering forms appears star-like in shape and in its sheen. 

 Is this Pittsburgh thing?

These tiny points of natural light showed themselves in the most man-made of places (the bus stop at the Waterfront, an outdoor shopping center, which is located adjacent to the Loews multiplex).  I spent at least 30 minutes, perhaps closer to an hour, outside waiting today, and plucked a handful of snow off the top portion of a fire hydrant, to see whether this shimmering effect was merely my imagination, a beautiful mirage on a snowy day.  It wasn’t.  On my dark blue glove, the flakes shone and sparkled, and I marveled.  Then I swept off the remaining snow and boarded the bus, which had come at last.

I am thinking of this now, while observing my backyard, because although the snow has stopped finally, I want to see whether this everyday space has captured the same magical quality.  First, I observe it in the darkness with no help from any streetlights—nothing but moonlight and a few lit windows in the neighbors’ yards.  (I know, I know, I promised to deliver a blog about my yard in the sunlight—maybe next week!)  To be honest, I don’t notice anything magical, just a quiet yard with little to no movement.

Eventually, I move inside, to observe it from our picture window and also to turn on the light. (You may recall from my previous blog entry our faulty backyard light, which likes to shut off all by itself, after only a brief time.)  This strategic move indoors is due mainly to the way the cold has turned my toes red (I am convinced I might have Raynaud’s disease, or a case of the “red, white, and blue” as a friend with a similar discomfort with the cold likes to call it.)  But it is also due to the fact that I want to observe whether this place looks any different through the window in our dining room.  Without the cold to distract my frozen limbs, and the light shining down in fits and starts, the yard seems more still than before, without the effect of my own tiny movements (an adjustment of a scarf, a motion of a finger in a too-tight glove, for example).

 I notice that indeed, there is a shimmering quality to the snow that appears under the glare of this man-made light, and I marvel at how sometimes it takes something “unnatural” to reveal the most astounding beauty in our physical world.   The snow falls away between the wooden slats of our deck, a void appearing in each spot between these snow-covered boards that could extend an inch to the ground, or down into the center of the earth, for all I can see, as the ground a few inches below is obscured by the snow.  The white I see here is freshly fallen, and has an entirely different quality than the stuff I’ve been trudging through all day—that stuff on sidewalks and walkways was trampled-on, gray or darkened by pedestrians’ boots, slushy and slick, a nuisance.  It had been transformed by a series of feet into something to be avoided, or watched carefully.

But here, the snow lies in the crevices between the bricks of our terrace, forms itself against the trunks of our trees, reaching upward toward the sky with the branches it inhabits and painting them with a white stripe (and here’s where I start singing a little Jack White to myself).  It lays across the tops of bushes, it fades away into red on the portion of our deck that’s covered by an awning.  A dusting of frost rests atop our grill, finds a home on the roof above my head, fills in the fountain and the tops of all the rocks there.  It frosts the tips of the fence posts along one edge of the yard like a stylish woman’s French manicure. 

I have to keep flipping the light switch, and during these intervals I am reminded of my constant interaction with nature from day to day.  Though I rarely make too much of this, life is filled with these little moments.  Today alone, as I spent time waiting in a public place out of doors, I took in the feel of snow in my eyes, in my hair, atop the handles of the bag I’d brought with my writing tools and papers in it.  Now that the snow has stopped falling on me, or forcing itself into my consciousness, am I interacting any less with it?  Maybe it is just easier to ignore nature, when it is not literally “in my face.”  But if I can ignore this world so readily, what does this mean for my life?

 Can I be happy, without engaging with it on a conscious level?  If I rarely connect with my surroundings, instead waiting impatiently for a bus to arrive so that I can step aboard and leave it all “out there,” what will I be missing without realizing it?  If I remain disconnected, forgetting to notice the shining stars scattered on the path before me, what is at stake for me?  Who else will point them out to me, if I am walking alone?  It seems I have a responsibility to myself, to think about these questions.  I don’t have answers just yet, but it feels important to ask them, regardless.