On Snow.

It’s snowing in Rochester.

I’m struggling with the cliché idea snowflakes have been endowed with. Surely, I can believe that no two people are alike, the sheer idea that any of our magnanimous atomic structures being aligned in the same manner over the spread of, let’s say, the 20 billion people that have been alive. You and I are surely not the same, though it oft seems we’ve fallen from the same tree of life, just on separate continents to separate mothers.

It seems like snowflakes, though, could very possibly have an identical twin floating somewhere in the atmosphere. In a single storm, perhaps trillions of snowflakes fall. If we take into account the relatively few atoms in each snowflake, it seems nearly impossible that the atmosphere has never (by accident of course, atmospheres have a reputation to protect) created two crystals that are, if not exactly identical, so strikingly similar that it would be hopeless to name them and try to remember which is which should they be scattered among their relatives. I mean, the weather is practically begging for a Mary-Kate and Ashley style switcheroo film. Worse still, would be to name these snowflakes similar sounding names like Ayumi and Tetsumi, should they be Japanese, for example. We can’t assume all snowflakes American, now can we? Some may very well be immigrants from other continents, traveling across vast oceans, morphing into raindrops and waves and perhaps specially bottled water from the French Alps.

I would much prefer to believe that no two snowstorms are alike, since, from where you stand, you can never take in the full expanse of shivering people and scuttling cars. All you can see is what you see... and that is often far different from what you actually see, all snow personification aside.

Americano with Skim

I need to do this thing. In fact, I’m doing it write now. Document the moments when I feel content, woven into myself with just the right amount of espresso threads, like a giant, pro-active rug (which I realize makes almost no sense as a metaphor). That way, when I look back on my youth, I won’t be able to fool myself into believing that I was a constant outpouring of angst.

Sure, I hang on every word Elizabeth Wurtzel pours out, copious stories of broken families and lithium and ecstasy trips.

But not today. Today, I am sunny and wonderful and listening to Devendra Banhart and taking photographs for the new identification that will live in my wallet. Today, I am May in January.

Friday, 01/02/08

Written on the 2nd. It sees trite now, but it's been sitting on my work computer all weekend. It would seem a tragedy to not give let it see some light...

Fridays are always dead here in Stabile. Aside from a few footsteps around the cryostat and surgical rooms, the only sound I can distinguish from the whir of the thirteen abandoned computers around me is the shuffling of paper a few cubicles away and my constant click-clacking of keys A through Z.

Today, I bought a faux leather jacket I’ve had my eyes on at Macy’s, but I still want and want. I’m the ideal American in some respects, fueled by the need to constantly purchase and consume. You can bet that if there were more like me, the markets would never take a dip, I suppose no one would have a 401k, either. So, the markets give and take.

Meandering around the mall on the first day of two thousand and nine, and I’m suddenly suffocated by the meaningless scurrying and frustrated glance of its inhabitants, and I can’t find a way to stop myself from wanted things, and my tastes are ever-more expensive. I want a graphite damier louis vuitton planner with spiral binding and horrendously silver dog tags by david yurman.

I want a job at loring pasta bar like patrick had, even though I’ve never even met patrick, to walk away from a few hours of work with a few hundred dollars. I want to meander back and forth down aisles of people around tables, laughing at nothing, sipping on white wine. I want to sit across from kara and brittani in some nameless sushi bar again and pretend to watch my weight; something I constantly lose at home because I cant stand to sit around with my family and eat eat eat.

I want to know every language ever spoken, wander through the streets of prague and buy something overflowing with carbohydrates from a market vendor. I want to be irresponsible with no consequences, flitting across borders at my leisure to have coffee with someone in belgrade. Eat handmade pizza in florence again. Mostly, I just want to feel like I don’t always have to be oppressed by this constant hammering of responsibility, pounding on and on like a neverending techno thump. I would take voice lessons and learn to play the guitar if I could holler a single note on key.