Let It Snow


Wow. It's really fracking cold here. And it's not even Christmas yet! (Last year, we didn't get this kind of snowfall until February or so). At the same time, it's extremely beautiful (as long as no one and nothing gets hurt), as the snow tends to clarify the landscape and cast it into a kind of black-and-white, cinematic space. Not a bad trade-off, really. One of my favorite books as a child was Ezra Jack Keats' A Snowy Day , a gorgeous picture book about a young boy who delights in the rituals of the first snowfall, spends all day outside, and is crushed to discover that the snowball he's saved has melted overnight. I can't play today-- have to go teach Truffaut. Then again, the two activities are not entirely unrelated-- after all, it was Truffaut's mentor who once said "Photography affects us like a phenomenon in nature, like a flower or a snowflake whose vegetable or earthly origins are an inseperable part of their beauty." And later, in the same essay, describing the phenomenon of photography, but also aptly interpreting my walk in the Cineville snow, if we substitute the weather for the lens: "Only the impassive lens, stripping its object of all those ways of seeing it, those piled-up preconceptions, that spiritual dust and grime with which my eyes have covered it, is able to present it in all its virginal purity to my attention and consequently to my love."

Comments

Greg said…
We've only got about an inch or two here but I've always liked the first snow of the year. Although I'm at work regardless and the drive home is truly going to suck.
Brian Doan said…
Hope you have a safe drive home!
Greg said…
Well we got around four inches instead. Only hydra-planed twice on the way home. IT - WAS - TERRIFYING! Minivans just don't handle well in ice.
Anonymous said…
Glad you made it home safe, Jonathan. Scary stuff.
Greg said…
Thanks boolise.
Brian Doan said…
Oh, I suppose I'm glad you made it home safely, Jonathan-- I mean, you seem pretty nice for a Red Sox fan. (:

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