How twisted, this life of mine. How wonderfully poetic it is...
Heartbroken, realizing that many of my dreams had turned to ash as I reached for them, I solemnly slid my feet into my running shoes.
"Maybe they weren't my dreams after all" I told myself to alleviate the sadness choking my heart. Accepting to let go of things is one thing but it isn't automatic, a journey needs be undertaken, the thoughts must be faced, not ignored or evaded.
I thus headed out the front door for another one of my thought-processing walks. Heavy rain clattered on the pavement as I poked my head out. I refused to stay inside despite the cold, despite the rain. I put on my gloves, confirmed the strength of my grip on my travel mug, filled with freshly brewed coffee and I headed out onto the streets.
As I walked, I practiced the teachings found within the litany of fear, letting self-defeating thoughts (and fears) come to mind but banishing them after recognizing them. I said I shouldn't ignore the thoughts but after so many, it's not helpful to let the flow continue unabated; self-flagellation is not the answer. When I find myself submerged in an onslaught of such thoughts, I turn to math. I calculate things mentally, I multiply quantities, I divide random stuff, I make schedules, ratios, etc. As I calculated the number of hours I walked each week, trying to extrapolate that to absurd time scales, I noticed that the rain had slowed down considerably. There were not as many droplets, the way sounds from the city reverberated had subtly changed and each raindrop, if it could still be qualified as such, hit my protective with audible impacts.
I walked up a hill named La Côte Boisée as it is a lightly forested incline which also happens to be the first real sign of the Canadian Shield, which spans the entire continent from this point up to the polar regions. As I ascended onto this fortified mass, the rain turned to snow. November 19th, first snow of the year.
I forgot my math, forgot my troubles, my pain. I was smack-dab in the middle of a transient moment which occurs only once a year and rarely in such a dramatic fashion.
The first snow holds everything I love about life.
It is an event that people anticipate with dread, a necessary transition which one must be ready for when it eventually shows up.
It is also the only snow that drivers truly seem to fear. I've watched cars drive by slowly, in silent reverence of this majestic event.
I know from experience that 15 minutes later, most cars would resume their normal speeds and behaviors, their silence turning back to the usual stream of weather-based complaints.
Once I reach the top of that hill, there is a short distance that I must travel before coming back down. During this short trip, I look to my left, a sea of roofs, chimneys and church steeples stretch for miles and miles, beyond the almost-metropolis of Montréal.
As I watched the snow fall, groups of flakes following the crisscrossing gusts of wind, I noticed two things.
First, this created a weird veil, similar to a very grainy noise filter. My eyes are beyond damaged from years of monitor abuse and such a pattern somehow allows them to focus on...nothing in particular. It behaves like in most reflex-based video games, where in order to properly dodge incoming bullets and enemies, one must learn to focus on a weird, non-existant point, similarly to the point of focus one must reach to see autostereograms (magic-eye images which were popular in the 1990s). It is similar and completely different at the same time, as my eyes need movement to constantly shift their focus and thus properly recreate the image without the use of corrective eyeglasses.
Secondly, the snow created a sheet of fog which really reminded me of the good old draw-distance fog in (again) video games from the 1990s.
I started singing RadioHead's Creep or at least the lyrics I could remember
I reminded myself of how the graphics of many old-school games are considered as dated, of how the visual artifacts mentioned above are often looked upon as bugs, things that should be removed from history, justifying many remastered editions.
But the feelings such limitations evoke cannot be properly processed by a mind born after such limitations had been pushed back. A short draw-distance, to me, evokes a feeling of mystery, where everything is possible, where your imagination fills in the horizon. Trying to convince modern consumers of bringing back these limitations would surely prove to be pointless but that is where some of the magic is lost.
That magic, just like the one of catching snowflakes with one's tongue, is real to me.
Heartbroken, realizing that many of my dreams had turned to ash as I reached for them, I solemnly slid my feet into my running shoes.
"Maybe they weren't my dreams after all" I told myself to alleviate the sadness choking my heart. Accepting to let go of things is one thing but it isn't automatic, a journey needs be undertaken, the thoughts must be faced, not ignored or evaded.
I thus headed out the front door for another one of my thought-processing walks. Heavy rain clattered on the pavement as I poked my head out. I refused to stay inside despite the cold, despite the rain. I put on my gloves, confirmed the strength of my grip on my travel mug, filled with freshly brewed coffee and I headed out onto the streets.
As I walked, I practiced the teachings found within the litany of fear, letting self-defeating thoughts (and fears) come to mind but banishing them after recognizing them. I said I shouldn't ignore the thoughts but after so many, it's not helpful to let the flow continue unabated; self-flagellation is not the answer. When I find myself submerged in an onslaught of such thoughts, I turn to math. I calculate things mentally, I multiply quantities, I divide random stuff, I make schedules, ratios, etc. As I calculated the number of hours I walked each week, trying to extrapolate that to absurd time scales, I noticed that the rain had slowed down considerably. There were not as many droplets, the way sounds from the city reverberated had subtly changed and each raindrop, if it could still be qualified as such, hit my protective with audible impacts.
I walked up a hill named La Côte Boisée as it is a lightly forested incline which also happens to be the first real sign of the Canadian Shield, which spans the entire continent from this point up to the polar regions. As I ascended onto this fortified mass, the rain turned to snow. November 19th, first snow of the year.
I forgot my math, forgot my troubles, my pain. I was smack-dab in the middle of a transient moment which occurs only once a year and rarely in such a dramatic fashion.
The first snow holds everything I love about life.
It is an event that people anticipate with dread, a necessary transition which one must be ready for when it eventually shows up.
It is also the only snow that drivers truly seem to fear. I've watched cars drive by slowly, in silent reverence of this majestic event.
I know from experience that 15 minutes later, most cars would resume their normal speeds and behaviors, their silence turning back to the usual stream of weather-based complaints.
Once I reach the top of that hill, there is a short distance that I must travel before coming back down. During this short trip, I look to my left, a sea of roofs, chimneys and church steeples stretch for miles and miles, beyond the almost-metropolis of Montréal.
As I watched the snow fall, groups of flakes following the crisscrossing gusts of wind, I noticed two things.
First, this created a weird veil, similar to a very grainy noise filter. My eyes are beyond damaged from years of monitor abuse and such a pattern somehow allows them to focus on...nothing in particular. It behaves like in most reflex-based video games, where in order to properly dodge incoming bullets and enemies, one must learn to focus on a weird, non-existant point, similarly to the point of focus one must reach to see autostereograms (magic-eye images which were popular in the 1990s). It is similar and completely different at the same time, as my eyes need movement to constantly shift their focus and thus properly recreate the image without the use of corrective eyeglasses.
Secondly, the snow created a sheet of fog which really reminded me of the good old draw-distance fog in (again) video games from the 1990s.
I started singing RadioHead's Creep or at least the lyrics I could remember
When you were here before
Couldn't look you in the eye
You're just like an angel
Your skin makes me cry
...
I wish I was special.
You're so fucking special...
But I'm a creep
I'm a weirdo
What the hell am I doing here?
I don't belong here.
...
I want to have control.
I want a perfect body...
I want a perfect soul...
And the muffled reverb absorbed my wailing, as if I were addressing a silent prayer to a god, a prayer that no one else could hear.
I stuck my tongue out to catch the snow drops, thinking that people might see me and judge me but I didn't care; this is my time, I am 7 years old, fuck what you think, adults.
But the feelings such limitations evoke cannot be properly processed by a mind born after such limitations had been pushed back. A short draw-distance, to me, evokes a feeling of mystery, where everything is possible, where your imagination fills in the horizon. Trying to convince modern consumers of bringing back these limitations would surely prove to be pointless but that is where some of the magic is lost.
That magic, just like the one of catching snowflakes with one's tongue, is real to me.
There's a French term for this type of magical moment, which I think has no direct equivalent in English : féérie.
It means magical but with a dash of added whimsy, fantasy and child-like wonder. It's Christmas memories, encapsulated in one word.
The féérie of the moment was so powerful that I lost myself in the streets of my own neighborhood; a place I've walked and cycled through almost every day for the past 39 years, 29 if you count my brief decade living in the afore-mentioned metropolis. Usually when I am lost I panic a bit but it didn't matter now, I was being myself, happy, free and lost within a square of major streets; I would eventually recognize something that would make me find my way.
That magic briefly comes back with The First Snow.
---
I wrote this whole thing in one sitting, as usual. I did not however put on any music, not even RadioHead's Creep. I wrote this in silence and I think that the result is much better, more direct and genuine.
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