Falling, Snow, and Silence

The lights have gone out. And it's snowing.

There's a specific silence that falls with snow. I often think I should look it up, or ask someone who reads science books why that is. But I don't think I really want to know. It's enough, to look out the window, or to stand on the porch and hear the almost crystaline silence accompanying the descending flakes.

It has the air of a gentleman in hat and overcoat offering his arm to a veiled lady stepping out of a carriage. A veiled lady who might be young or old, fair or dark. That sort of decorum, respect, tradition, mystery. Something unshakable, timeless, and holy in the most humble, human way.

Before the lights went out, I was making a half-hearted chili. I forced myself to do it, having read what I'd written in the previous entry, where I announced to the blog world at large that sometimes I survive entirely on bacon and eggs. I read that, imagining a reader thinking, "How sad that she doesn't cook for herself!" Picturing the kind of reader who comes home after work and fixes herself a little plate of nice things, grapes and brie and stoned wheat thins, just a tiny plate to snack on with a glass of Pinot Noir, while she grills herself a salmon filet and stir-fries snow peas.

I thought, "You know, Cupcake, you might exert a little effort on your own behalf. You can cook. Why don't you make yourself something nice?"

This chili would not have counted as anything nice. This chili knew it was being forced, practically expressed like a boil, from the ingredients in the fridge and pantry. It refused to cooperate. Everyone-- cook, chili, and reading audience alike-- was done a great service when the electricity went out and the stove relinquished heat like a narcoleptic releasing consciousness. (Truth be told, what I really wanted was the bacon and eggs.)

Having been given a stay of execution-- or stay of dinner, anyway -I went outside on the porch to smoke a cigarette and stare at the falling flakes, white like stars shooting across a sky of unforgiving indigo.

Because the electricity is off, the heat is off. I reawakened the fire in the woodstove, which I'd let nap through the afternoon. And I lit candles around the living room, where, once I post this (from my battery charged laptop), I will curl up with a stack of books, reading by what light I have mustered. It should be enough. I have a wonderful chair, huge, that seems to hug the person sitting in it. And the dogs will come and find me, nestling into knees and edges of things until it will be cozy and peaceful and the quiet night will drift past like clouds.

Okay, maybe not quite like that. It's --well, it's a tad scary sitting here in the dark, miles from anyone else. I keep thinking about that tagline from Alien: "In Space, No One Can Hear You Scream." It's so quiet that every noise sounds momentous. There was just a big cracking sound in the yard, probably (surely, yes, surely) a branch breaking under the weight of snow and ice. And that thumping sound that keeps happening on the roof is probably the just metal shifting as the house lets off the heat. Right? God only knows. All I can say is if, dear readers, you never hear from Cupcake again, you can at least know with satisfaction that, at the grisley end, she was thinking of you.

Maybe I will break out the bottle of wine. After all, a bottle of Pinot Noir really makes a girl feel like she's doing something nice for herself. And the heat's evaporating from the room around me. I'll need to stoke up the fire and wine will help to keep me warm.

Tomorrow, when the sun comes up, I'm pouring the chili out into the woods. And I'm making bacon and eggs. On the woodstove if the power's not back on.

Life's too short to eat things you don't really want. At any moment, the cataclysm might occur that will change everything.

Maybe that's why the silence comes with the snow. To let us think about that, in the quiet. To let us hear ourselves think about our own gentle descent into the end. We will all, one day, fall with just that much resolution and inevitability. Let us hope we have as much grace. And that our last meal is the thing we really wanted.