The Zen of Falling Snow

I step outside of the bar and cold air rushes to greet me. The last drink keeps me warm but only for a fleeting moment like those last embers of a campfire.

Tightening my scarf and burying my hands in my pocket, I accept the inevitability of the walk and get on with it. The sidewalk is extra rigid on nights like this and the clack-clack-clack of my footsteps sounds amplified in the freezing silence.

The air is still tonight. I'm at once grateful the wind isn't present to harass my bones and resentful of the eerie calm I'm forced to endure in its absence. I hasten my step as I become aware of myself, alone in the quiet of the night. The city feels like a chasm beneath the black sky, sinking from the weight of the chill.

I can't help feeling isolation bearing down on my shoulders.

I stop at the corner and reach for the companionship of a smoke. Lighting it, I consider the possibility that my small burst of flame could be enough to ignite the tensions in the world and combust the entire sky above me. With my luck, I'd survive.

The snow starts in unison with my next step. It's a soft precipitation. Individual flakes fall lightly, spinning and dancing to some inaudible tune of the night, passing through the glow of the street lights and then returning to nowhere. If it weren't for me watching, there'd be no memory that they even existed.

They don't seem to care.

When you visit Manhattan, they tell you not to look up at the buildings. That's how stick-up boys spot the suckers. It's a sad state of affairs to have to deny your sense of wonder to avoid exposing your vulnerability. That's what life seems to be reduced to these days ' exchanging joy for security and experiencing neither.

As I walk, I give in. I allow my gaze to drift skyward. The falling of the snow looks like the sound of a perfect jazz tune. There was a random and deliberate order in it.

I forget the cold. Each snowflake to hit my face feels refreshing, almost like the mist off a sprinkler in the summer.

I stop walking and stand still under the street light in order to get the best view of my dancers.

They continue to stream down from the sky, twirling in their careless freefall. The simple beauty of it overwhelms me. It's like a sense of childhood magic. A quick scan of my memory can produce no recollection of the last time I stopped to observe something natural.

A glow forms in my gut, similar to the feeling of that last drink, but more pure. It rises slowly like a bubble through tar. It feels like the color of amber.
I keep looking upward at the steady stream of earthbound souls and the bubble continues to rise, lodging itself in my throat. I choke for a moment and then it bursts. My skin crawls as waves of simultaneous elation and melancholy course through my body.

I find myself on my knees, tears running loose down my face. I'm mourning a life wasted, moments come and gone that may have been as special as the one I'm lingering in, but instead went unnoticed, disregarded as trivial.

I do not hear the horns blare. I do not hear the screech of tire on black ice, nor the boom of the first impact.

I sense a mass of metallic death hurtling towards me, the fear of the driver projected out in front of it. Science tries to disprove telepathy but I feel the driver's soul pleading with mine to move ' not for my benefit necessarily, rather the protection of it's own conscience.

I did not move.

My soul speaks back, assuring the driver he wasn't at fault, even though I know his conscious mind rejected the message. Alas, that wasn't my cross to bear.

I just stare back into the headlights, seeing the snowflakes for a last moment before the light becomes blinding.

I do not fear death, having seen the snow fall in the city tonight. I've already danced my dance under street lights.