February 17, 2015

The first snowflake caught my eye as I was standing by the sink shaving. It was slow, and only intermittently visible against the pale fence, but at last it floated over dark ground and stood out. A hard wind blew, but behind the sheltering fence it pushed the flake only a little. How memorable it would have been if the flake had fallen on the green frond of the hart’s-tongue fern! I would have taken a photo of that. It settled instead on a small bump of dirt. The next flake didn’t come for countable seconds. The first one was still there, lingering–proudly, I would say– on its mound of dirt. One would fall upon the other until the landscape was white, and onlookers would share the illusion of a blanket, of a substance massy and extended, subsuming all individual flakes into itself. But I had seen that one fall. I had seen the tiny adjustments in its destiny, and thought, maybe for the first time, of the fragmented individuality of the snow, each flake with its incomparable shape and– I was convinced at that moment–unique place in the myriad. Oh, so many! By the time I was finished shaving, thousands upon thousands dwelt in the little space of my garden. The sky I could see from my window was full of uncountable battalions more, descending. I wished I hadn’t though of each possessing a little life, a little destiny. It made things complicated. I went out on to the porch to listen if I could actually hear voices.

The storm was pale but very slippery. The power was off long enough for me to develop cinematic despair, but not long enough for the house to cool. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the blue-white flash that was whatever it was exploding down on Merrimon that turned the power off. Walked at 3:30 this morning. Some places were slick and other places not. Unless one faced north, the air was oddly sultry. Not even a bird had stepped upon my drive.

Word comes from the Great Lakes Theater Conference that Washington Place has been selected (along with 4 others out of 578 entries) as one of the Mainstage features for their summer conference in Omaha. I think this conference grew up as the famous names migrated from Valdez, but I might be wrong. It seems more playwright and less celebrity oriented than Valdez, though my guess is that the surroundings in Alaska were more awesome than they will be in Omaha. I did not take full advantage of Valdez, but I will here, and WP is a much stronger play than NSDL was. Plus, if I’m reading the information right, they pay my way.

Doubt that class will be cancelled today; indifference, because I am prepared.