I took a spectacular-looking but harmless fall tonight, breaking loose from gravity for a microsecond–then I crashed. The air is warm, but earth underneath our feet still holds, like a grudge, the memory of those weeks of freezing.
As the landscape transforms to muddy pools over hidden patches of ice, it’s easy to fall out of love with snow. Remedy: Caltech’s lovely page of photos of snowflakes.
Do you remember your sense of mystery and awe when someone told you that no two snowflakes were alike? I remember feeling as if that were a mystery so close, I could almost catch it, almost grasp it, but not quite.
“The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science.” (Albert Einstein)
We live in a difficult, troubling, complex universe–more slippery than a Cambridge midnight sidewalk in early March–and yet, around any corner, we might tumble into a private source of joy.
Back to earth, now, I walked on after my tumble, heading out to the local diner for hasty dinner with my vegetarian daughter. My trousers were soaked, and I looked as if I had had a different, even more embarrassing kind of accident. I had an omelet, so good, and so delicious to be fed by someone else’s cooking than my own.
And it’s all the same universe–my wet pants, my embarrassment, my daughter’s serendipitous visit, the bruise that isn’t now bothering me much, the omelet, the worries about Iraq, and about my husband on a plane to Texas. I miss him. So I’m glad I found those snowflakes.