I wake up and run to the window to see the snow.
To run to the window is the only way — to commute toward snow.
There are no grownups when there is freshly fallen snow. There are only children in bigger pants: doughier, hunchier, bone on bone in rusty sockets with no collagen to spring from, but still always children, in the face of snow.
What was just a dusting last night is a mountain now. A cairn collection of snow-covered trash bags in the alleyway, guiding a path toward a Narnia of sparkling, lightsome billows of garbage festooned with garlands of spectral snow.
A Narnia of refuse. Mr. Tumnus pronking about in the spotlit alleyway. A winter wonderland of many-galloned trash bags that our super has placed to catch the falling beauty, to cushion it as it makes its way to earth.
A land so close you don’t even need a closet nor your imagination — you can merely awaken, find your lost tube socks at the foot of the sweaty bed, frolic expectantly to the window and behold it for yourself:
Snow-covered garbage!
The earth! Even in devolution! How splendid! Such aplomb in the face of demise — Maya Plisetskaya performing The Dying Swan on The Tonight Show — insuppressible glory, unstoppable, unsullied,
even in a death dance with garbage,
a commercial break to sell toothpaste, to sell lipstick, to sell — future — trash.
A swan song as we die spectacularly. A tonnage of snow upon a terroir of fetid diapers and slimy avocado skins.
At dawn, the spotlights in the alleyway create a post-intermission stage. A hope of something new to consume and then throw away.
The garbage is the host. The snow, tonight’s guest.
“Snowy Snow, tell us — about your latest project.”
“Oh, my, well, I’m just giving the garbage a soft place to land as we multiply in concert,” she says, flipping her wolfskin robes; The snow celebrity guest, who looks like Tilda Swinton.
“Wonderful, wonderful!” says the host. “Where can we see you?”
“Right now, and for the next several hours, out your window.”
“Well, isn’t that lovely.”
The garbage host flashes his veneers and botoxed baby forehead to the audience.
“Thank you so much for stopping by.”
This is terrific, Emma!