13. Snow (JW)
San Francisco, USA
Dear Owen,
I miss snow. I’m undoubtedly romanticizing, but when better to indulge nostalgic romanticism than when life is a state of perpetual sameness? Snow, despite its apparent monochrome uniformity, contains multitudes.
For example:
Snow is five year old me, looking at the vast blue-grey Ottawa sky. Teetering around with my mouth agape as a puffy red snowsuit with a child inside, I marvel at the sprinkling of flakes coating my tongue. A tongue that will, exactly once, experience why licking a metal pole in the freezing cold is ill advised.
Snow is the small cave on the front lawn carved out of the packed layers of snow shovelled off of our driveway onto our lawn. Every day after school, I rush out, metal spade in hand, to refine my little home outside my home.
Snow is the monuments and mountains and monsters moulded from fluff together with classmates day after day, thirty minutes at a stretch. Teachers attempted to ensure said fluff was being used as art supply rather than weapon. Kids, being kids, often rendered these attempts at protection unsuccessful.
Snow is the warmth I feel, blowing on a cup of hot chocolate cradled in two hands. Or the warmth of nestling under blankets. Or the huddling of friends waiting for the bus in a blizzard. It’s that peculiar kind of warmth you can only feel in the contrast from the cold.
Snow is the quiet that lets me hear nothing but my breath and a song on loop as I lie alone in the park beside my house, replaying a dream of a girl that left. Snow is also the peace of a long walk past a Christmas tree where a romance begins with a girl I’m chasing.
Snow was my childhood. Now, snow is the place I used to live, but only visit as a tourist to escape from the sameness of San Francisco’s timeless sweater weather. From way of life to road trip destination.
The frequent California road trips you planned for all of us in 2013 made adventures the norm rather the exception. On those road trips to Tahoe to visit the snow, I do remember taking it as my role to spark the conversation. I certainly wasn’t any help with the logistics.
There’s one question in particular I remember asking everyone back then that seems oddly prescient: “If you had a year to take fully paid, but you couldn’t travel and couldn’t keep anything you acquire in that year aside from the memories, what would you do?”
Do you remember what you answered?
You said you’d try to start a company. Looks like 2013 you knew 2021 you pretty well.
I said I’d try to master a bunch of different skills. I don’t know if I made 2013 Jamie proud, but I do now speak Cantonese poorly. In my defence, when I made the audacious claim of mastering many skills, I was assuming I’d be restricted to one city, not to one building.
Before I smashed my last iPhone (out of carelessness, not rage, don’t worry), I had a collection of conversation questions like this I’d found over the years. Most are sadly lost to my cavalier attitude to backing up my phone, but I think “What’s the closest thing to real magic?” was on that list.
I like the question because it can lead down so many different paths, and ultimately that’s all I want from a conversation starter: to act as a doorway into the wonderfully weird minds of people.
When I asked friends most recently, I appreciated not only the variety of the answers, but also of the varying interpretation of magic.
One friend focused on the craft of fantasy magic, likening it to cooking: the use of culinary spells (sometimes closely guarded), the rapid changes of form, and the practiced hand motions (swish and flick!).
Another friend’s focus lay in the invisible action-at-a-distance facet, immediately answering that clearly electromagnetism is the closest thing to real magic. To be honest, I’ve always been a bit disappointed at how infrequently the scientific method is explored in magical worlds. Maybe I should give Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality another shot.
While the technophile in me can’t ignore the awe I feel watching the evolution of deep learning tech I see from Two Minute Papers, I think in a broader sense, I’d choose language. Step back from the absolute ubiquity of language, and consider that by writing the words “fruit stand” I can propel you to a specific time and place and emotion. Humans have built a vast tower of abstractions that people live and die for, and the words that define those abstractions like “capitalism” and “democracy” and “science” and “devotion” have no physical reality. To me, that is magic.
Still, I think another friend’s answer points me in the direction I want most. Her answer focused on the experience of magic and was summarized in a single word: “serendipity”. The feeling that the world has crafted an opportunity for you that you didn’t knowingly forge yourself certainly does have a magical flavour to it, and oh boy do I miss that flavour.
Here’s hoping that just as trudging around the snow creates the special warmth emanating from a cup of cocoa, as we emerge from a social winter, we’ll feel a special serendipity.
Your friend in the cold and magical world,
Jamie
