i woke up this morning to snow. allow me to quote my favorite play of all time, Angels In America, by Tony Kushner.

Louis: Look at that heavy sky. It's purple.

Belize: Boy, what kind of a homosexual are you, anyway? That sky isn't purple. That's mauve.

Belize exits. Louis is left alone onstage. He looks up at the sky as the snow begins to fall.

Louis: Huh. Snow.

in the play, the snow falling is representative of protection from above, falling to blanket the earth, trying to stop us from moving. the whole idea behind the play is that god has left heaven (in the great san francisco earthquake of 1801) and the angels all figure it's because of humanity's "progress". we boom and explode and move forward at an incredibly startling rate for beings who are eternal, and we scare the angels. so in 1985 the angels name a prophet, Prior, a homosexual man recently diagnosed with AIDS, and visit him and proclaim that it is his duty to STOP MOVING. stop evolving, stop dying and birthing and fucking and killing and living, just stop moving. stop progress. not stop time, no no, that's up to god, but the hope is that humanity will stand in one place long enough for god to see how beautiful we really are, and then he'll return. well, the conclusion of the play (which is really just the first part of a two parter) is that Prior visits heaven, and returns their prophetic implements to them, and refuses his "duty" as a prophet. as he puts it, "i want more life."

more life. what a beautiful thing to want. more life. who doesn't want more life? i want more life. but the stillness of the snow makes me want to stop moving, to unfocus, to leave earthly things like work and studying and planning and eating behind and just...sleep. flop. lie there.

it really is so calming to watch it fall. a thick coat of ice falls one flake at a time. it's (forgive me for this) kind of like those plastic thingamajigs they sell at the Discovery store, that are filled with purple or pink liquid and their whole purpose is to flip them over every so often and watch the liquid drain from one end of the compartment to the other in tiny little drops.

here's a better metaphor. the world is like an hourglass, and now, at the end of the year, it turns over, drains its white particles back down here to melt, and prepares for the new year.