Wordy Wednesday: Snow

Oh look! It’s snowing! Isn’t it pretty, all the gentle fluffy flakes swirling round and round.

I think snow in the northeast this year must be like violence in the Old Testament–Unavoidable, Not Particularly Enjoyable After A Certain Point, Hard To See What The Purpose Of It Is.

Anyway, I had something clever I wanted to blog about but it would mean me going to dig up some article somewhere, and I’m too demoralized by the snow to actually go search for it, since I forgot to save the link, and then remember what I wanted to say. Maybe tomorrow. Or the next day.

I was just thinking that one of the purposes of this blog is to make myself feel happy about living here, in this snow bound fading rust belt town, by trying to make it seem vaguely romantic, in a decadent broken hearted kind of way. But I cannot achieve that because I don’t see it that way myself. The gentle effort at deception is Not Working, as Alouicious used always to say. On the other hand, I am not Unhappy. I am mostly carrying on without thinking about it at all. But every time it actually snows I stop, look out the window, whisper to myself “I Hate This”, and then go on to something else. I think, though, that I probably shouldn’t do that. I am, like a meddling disgruntled Isrealite Woman, standing at the door of my tent, gazing out over the camp, watching the manna fall. And when I whisper, about the manna, “I Hate This”, I am pretty well inviting the Lord Almighty to swollow me up in his just wrath. Of course, you can’t eat the snow. At least, I don’t recommend it, not the snow in our yard, blessed, as it is, by the presence of our dog. But the principle probably still holds. God is letting it fall, from the heavens, upon the place beneath. It is covering over the massive though slowly diminishing piles of black muck. It must be within his plan for the world. As rain and snow fall from the heaven and return not again and so on and so forth. So, as I lift up my eyes to that back hill, I will not whisper, “I Hate It”, I will whisper, “I don’t like it very much.”

And I will cry out for God’s mercy, in the way of David.

Oh God, who fashions all the snow and lets it fall,

let not the snow triumph over me.

Hear my cry, O Lord, and hearken to the sound of my voice.

The shovels are broken, O God.

The shovels are blunted and broken.

The snow suits are filthy, Oh Lord,

the snowsuits are really horribly horribly filthy.”