Snow

Well today I saw it was snowing out and it got me thinking so hear is my writing for the week.

The idea of snow has always fascinated and impressed me. The way snow flakes can drift down from the sky. You can never predict the way they will fall. The way the flakes whir and dance with immeasurable grace to the ground. Everyone says that every snow flake is unique, I find that fact very difficult to believe. If every snow flake is and individual, a one of a kind wouldn't it make sense for every snow bank to be one of a kind as well. Shouldn't the combination of so much apartness have its own feeling of individuality. But this isn't the case. If I walk down the street and look around every snow bank will look the same, just a huge singular, uniform blanket of snow. This makes me a little sad when I think of it, that in order to join the mass a flake must loose its individuality. They fall from the heavens with a burst of beauty but then they settle into a quite quilt of conformity, which is beautiful in its own way but comparatively unremarkable. Snow flakes fall by the trillions with their own unique size, shape, and path like dancers, in a way reminiscent of a masterpiece, but then their radiance is lost among the mass of former diamonds. True, not all of the snow flakes become part of the mass, some fall and come to rest on the sleeve of wool coat, the cheek of a laughing child, or the long eyelash of a kind face. All of these are beautiful as well, like decorative frames for the canvas which is the snow flake, but these are all short lived. The wool will break the form, the cheek will melt it, and the eyelash will blink sending the snow flake twirling the rest of the way to the ground where it will be lost, the individual swallowed by the whole.

I wonder, is this how us as humans might appear to some other unearthly power? We start off bright, cheerful, dancing from our mother's arms being ourselves because that is all we know how to be. But then we fall to the ground become the blanket that is our society and community. It has its good parts, it is safe and comforting, but with none of the splendor as the dancing creativity of the child. Still a few of us will find other ways to avoid the mass and land somewhere else by holding on to our total uniqueness. But like a snow flake this will inevitably fail. Those who try to stay different will be seen as beautiful, and then be burned, broken, or eventually fall in line with everyone else. Is this really the fate of an artist? To hold on to your identity as long as you can before the public scorns you, or futility makes you give in to the inevitable?

Though it looks hopeless many still strive to hold on to the freedom we radiate at birth, and pray that the eyelash will just decide that it doesn't need to blink right then, it can wait, and so preserve the beauty of the snow flake just a little longer.


Wow, that was a little depressing. If you have any comments, feedback, or a more cheerful view of snow please let me know. As always thank you all and keep on writing!
-Matt McFadden