TEN DISCOURSES ON SNOW (Winner of the Miracle Monocle Award for Innovative Writing)
When heavy snow revives an ancient language
maps of national territories change shape
on this continent
snow shows deep concern
for a foreigner’s small room
—Bei Dao, “Old Snow,” translated by
Bonnie S. McDougall and Chen Maiping
He takes the part of snow.
—Ian Fairley, from “Iceland,”
the introduction to his translation
of Paul Celan’s Snow Part (Schneepart)
1. THE IDEA OF SNOW
To imagine snow as vulgar, distasteful.
To anticipate the climate and country both.
To endure the sensation of a never-ending,
ever-abundant snowfall that dirties every
road and alley and archway.
To imagine snow as partial, nearly full.
To believe in the imperfection of snow.
To calculate the area ceded or lost entirely,
measuring the distance (in inches miles or
decades) from footstep to muted footstep.
To imagine snow as coarse, rough-edged.
To expose a wet tongue and recoil at the taste of television static.
To switch on the television (you haven’t
watched it in years) only for the screen to
freeze, hover in a state of snow-dumb
expectation.
To imagine snow as static, unchanging.
To place a mirror on snowy ground and gaze at its spangled reflection.
To remove yourself from the picture entirely,
returning only when every line has been
silently and efficiently erased.
To imagine snow.
2. STILL SNOW
During the first snowfall of the year, we will learn to gather ourselves. Our hands will run raw. The telephone lines—they will bend and sigh and pose an argument for yet stiller winters. Did you know that snow has low blood pressure? We have seen good men ruined for want of that pose, that flush.
We live in some place. It resembles an ancestral village, but with cleaner lines. I could demonstrate this for you. Simply cup your palms around your ears and listen for the sounds of your birth.
There is no language for us. No word that can adequately describe the contours of our situation. We are no people. We are everywhere, everywhere descending. We are the line dividing roof from sky, limit from horizon, and the truth is we have always been. No language, only grammar. But how do you end up there, you may ask, so high above the floating world? Well, for a long while we bowed our heads and did not question what we were given. We tilled the fields, reared our children, gossiped and gambled, until gradually we began to notice the tread of our feet growing lighter, the ground below us receding into air. You had no idea, of course. By the time you chose your first name, the weather was already changing.
My life can be unpeeled from yours. A meter of snow with the notes rising, beat for beat, up and away from the heat at the back of your throat. We prefer to do things this way, ritualistically—a word you have invented to make us smaller. So be it. Our song is one note. Listen, listen…
3. ORDINARY SNOW
My first memory is of snow falling in the night.
I couldn’t have been older than two, three at most.
My mother cradled me against her chest.
We stood by the window, opposite a streetlamp.
The snow flurried against the lamplight like insects trapped in
glass.
Although I wouldn’t recognize that image until much later.
(The insects, not the snow.)
I think my mother was humming something.
She always talked about wanting to be a singer,
despite hardly ever listening to music.
Little treasure, little treasure,
my little treasure.
We lived in a tiny
apartment then.
Or so she used
to tell me.
I have
no memory of
the apartment,
only the snow
falling in the
night.
W
here
there is
no
memor
y, there
can
only be
memor
y’s
false
image
—the
flutteri
ng of
wings.
My first memory is of snow falling in the night.
4. TOMORROW’S SNOW
She moves across a temperature controlled climate. On land, by sea, through air. Conditions are perfect. Visibility is optimal.
She carries a photograph and a pair of shoes. The corners of the photograph have begun to curl inwards ever so slightly. In the background, a smattering of rocks and trees, a screen painting. One could imagine the tableau in full: but no. One could not imagine. Look instead at the faces. Your eyes lost somewhere in hers. The shoes belonged to her grandmother, they are the size of a small child’s feet. Chrysanthemums, pheasants. Nothing, you realize, can ever truly be replaced.
She looks directly ahead. Wonders about the time and where it went. A dizzying whiteness surrounds her. Annihilation can be pleasurable, exquisite. Even at a distance, even as that individual approaches invisibility—
She gathers herself. The landscape is changing, particle by particle. Who can tell her which direction to face? To the north, bitter wind. To the south, bitter water. To the west and east, the lateral movement of an uncompromising son. She has been down this road before, years ago. The man with betel-red teeth. He wrote her a letter: To the ice queen, who thaws in deepest winter. Now she glides atop a frozen pond and thinks of no one. (Certain fish have learned to burrow down to the freshly oxygenated water, where they still themselves all winter long. Gently they comb the water over their sleepless gills.)
She breathes into her hands and rubs them together. Her breath crystallizes, dissipates and generates heat. Just beyond her, shreds of cloud scurry across the horizon. You have played and replayed the image countless times, yet this is the first time you have noticed the cloud, the windowpane, the peeling vinyl-upholstered seats. When you finally look back, her hair seems different; her lips are chapped. You could board the train, write her a letter, too: After all these years, I know I made the right decision, letting you go. Maybe we’ll meet again some day, in another country… Is it a country you have seen? Only through a windowpane.
She retrieves her luggage. Maybe she’ll buy a magazine, listen to the evening news. It’s forecasted to snow. It’s f-f-forecast—
5. SNOW IN THE MOUTH
A game of telephone, also known as Chinese whispers, can often be a useful antidote to snow-slurred speech. First: press your lips to the gap in the door and wait for the signal. Then: repeat after us. Are you coming back any time soon? Watch as the message snakes its way through each train car, becoming increasingly unintelligible as space goes on (and on and on and on). Language is never solely invention, never solely, it is layering and obfuscation, an indelicate white snowfall that buries its shadows underfoot. But language in transit floats, turns weightless.
I press my lips to the gap. The wind whistles through my teeth. Are you coming back any time soon? I would like to ask. Did you forget the map, the boundary, the location? Did the snow weigh you down? On the television screen, the forecaster’s snow-white face turns into a three-quarter profile. He tries to speak, gesturing at the railroads, the arteries clogged with snow. (No one has been able to move for weeks.) I would like to describe what I am seeing—the meaningless depth, the ordered and orderly surface. I would like to describe how this landscape persists. Then I notice the forecaster mouthing a single word. Two syllables.
Impossible to know where to orient yourself. Whether you have cast the message backwards or forwards. There is only distance, her figure gently receding into snowdrift. You close your eyes and imagine the scene unfurling like a painting, flat and with every element accounted for. She could be a falcon, plum blossoms, the snow-dappled mountain cut off at the right. She could be the very earth you have read about, passing on and forever returning. You have waited for its return, memorized all the possible variations, yet you are left with something even less than an echo—just the memory of a handful of words, haphazardly spoken. A sensation so cold it burns.
6. MELTING SNOW
The past resembles a city made of snow. You have visited it often. The city square—with its train station and tented market and glass-blown playground filled with the noises of schoolchildren—is an ideal place to meet yourself for a cup of coffee. You could sit on a bench, or head into the small cafe. You could open a book, or stare at your phone. There are no wires in the past. Similarly, no authors or notifications or automatic updates. The snow has done away with all of that. The snow has taken care of everything.
You see her sitting at the cafe. She is visiting, she says, only visiting. “It’s incredible what they’ve done with the place.”
“Is it?” you say.
“Yes. The last time I was here—oh, I can’t even remember how long ago it was!—there was nothing on the walls, and hardly any chairs. And it was so dirty.”
She signals a waiter, who arrives even-footed and clad in a uniform of snow.
“Can you explain to us the difference between snow and ice?” she says.
The waiter nods, expressionless. “Certainly. It’s a simple question of form. You are both aware of the water cycle, I assume?”
She looks to you, and you say nothing.
“Snow is a winnowing of ice into ever more delicate shapes. Hexagons, needles, columns, and finally rhizomatic branches. The snowflake you are imagining only results from the lowest possible temperatures, when ice has been pushed to its limits. A harrowing beauty, if I do say so myself. But you don’t see much of those anymore.”
“Perfect,” she says. “We’ll take as many as you have on hand.”
The waiter nods and skates away. You have no idea where they could be headed, doors being so recent an addition to the past.
“They’re so good to us here,” she says.
“When I saw you before…” you say, testing the handle.
She was hardly seven. Bridging the distance between city and countryside. We had to grow up so fast, then, but it was a different time. A different time, you understand. We were like the little peasants you see in a screen painting. We used to shit in a hole in the ground. And walk so far—I carried my brother on my back. I carried him up the mountain and massaged the bunions on his feet. It was my responsibility, as the eldest. I sang a song under my breath to make him stop crying. The notes were all out of order. I wanted to rearrange them. I wanted to tell you everything, but it was a different time, you understand. We never dreamed of clean porcelain.
“You look taller,” she says. “Did you grow while I was gone?”
The tab has not changed. You will have to pay it, and quick, before the snow has fully settled. Our city can’t wait forever.
7. FORGOTTEN SNOW
Snow forgets. When enough snow has fallen, even the sharpest edge can be buffed to an inoffensive shine. For instance, a foreign body moving through a foreign country.
Someone has changed the channel to a movie, a historical drama. Little shadows dance inside the screen. Shadow 1 has the look of mischief. He is the invader, the mad army general. He spends his days terrorizing the citizenry with threats of fire. Shadow 2 is the lone soldier. He must defend his territory or else watch the invader lay waste to everything he holds dear. What could possibly happen next? The audience sits primed for humiliation. Shadow 1 advances with his scimitar, beating the cowardly Shadow 2 into an elegant retreat. Helpless, helpless shadow! His territory is already lost. Both shadows know this. The line dividing conqueror from conquered trembles like a branch fattened with snow. Shadow 2 lowers his sword. He sighs, perhaps, or lets out a cry of anguish.
The fictional year is 1949. Behind the curtain, someone is singing a tired old folk song no one can remember. He sings the song and maneuvers the shadows this way and that. You can sense the director’s presence looming over everything. Try to keep in mind. Your character is trying to. The line is supposed to be read as. Just one more take. One more. The actor breaks—he needs a sip of water, a pause in the action before he has to relive it all over again. It’s freezing out here, he says. The fictional year is 1949. “We were never taught history,” she has told you, ever since you can remember. And what is a person without their history? Snow forgets.
8. DRIFTING SNOW
I am trying to paint a portrait
of snow.
Why?
To get around my fear of
marking, of being marked.
How?
Because or in spite of myself.
Oh.
To get around the self that
peels me from me.
I see.
But the paint melts into the
canvas.
Such thoughts never
would have occurred
to me (personally).
I apply a fresh layer and pray
for the best.
You must possess the
patience of a monk.
Today’s forecast announces
“unexpected sunlight,” which
is of course translation.
Such thoughts are
known to cause
damage.
“Accidental,” might have
been a better choice after all.
I’m still dying to
know.
What colors am I planning
to use for.
The snow.
The sun.
Winter.
Summer.
Mother.
Father.
You.
Me.
And so on.
And so on.
We might be on the
same page.
Pages are places where snow walks around all day, whispering in the ears of passersby. You teach yourself to recognize its footfalls. You swoon, you blush. You jot down feverish notes, instructions for a painting that will begin in summer, tentatively titled “Conversations with Falling Snow.” When she asks you what you’re working on, you tell her that you’re transcribing a message, she’ll get to read it eventually, it’s the most beautiful thing she can imagine and her participation is absolutely crucial—can she just wait for the snow to settle? In the meantime, you muffle your way through frenzied streets, one shoelace untied, eyes trained (where else) directly overhead.
9. REMEMBERED SNOW
The screen looks out on a landscape that refuses to undo itself. Reports vary as to the estimated snowfall—some say nearly four feet, others approximately thirty inches. Who can tell when the terrain is so variously organized, here wind-scattered and composed of mounds and ridges, there pressed and folded like a freshly laundered sheet? We attached meaning to it, once. The restaurant. The gas station. The office buildings. The grocery store. The library. We used to have names for every face. Now there is only the snow rising against the dark, the palette of moonlight. Names recede. Colors recede. She begins to recede, then veers suddenly to the left, pressing herself flat against the side of a snowbank. How can she look like that, you wonder? So much smaller than the last time you spoke. You watch as she spreads her bare arms and legs wide on either side of her. As if on command, she begins to sweep them up and down and side to side, gently at first, with some degree of precision, then insistently, desperately, as if she were begging the form and its supposed meaning to resolve into one. The forecaster issues a sigh of relief. He thought he had lost her for a moment there. (The forecaster is always having dreams in which he loses her, has made some terrible mistake, cannot, must find her, and when he wakes up the back of his neck is glittering with sweat.) While she continues to carve herself deeper and deeper into the snow, he asks if anyone would care to comment. All around her, the truer forms awaken, speak into the silence. The first one—its four walls and sloped top recommend a house. “No one has noticed my absence. They demolished me and erected these big tenement apartments, right after they installed the telephone lines. But I still exist! I swear. At night I hear the sounds of a small child crying. The voice gets smaller and smaller, until I lose sight of it completely. Other people’s pain is really obnoxious.” The second form agrees. “They called me an alleyway. All day they kicked me, trod on me, spat on me, spilled their tinctures and elixirs on me. It makes me sick. Did they really think my only purpose was to smell their dirty feet? That I had no other life besides this one, the one they built for me—in spite of me? I used to be something else. We all used to be something else. A little understanding, that’s all we ask for.” “Exactly!” The other forms join in, paying her no mind. She is crying; her tears land invisibly on the snow. “I wish I was never born. I wish I was born a tree. I wish I knew what it was like to be sheltered, not shelter. Maybe in the next life. The next life will be better.” Low wind of agreement. “The next world. In the next world, all our striving will make sense, and all our longings will be shrunken down to a thimble-full of water. Hurrah! Let’s empty our cups! Let’s say three cheers for the next world!” You press your palm flat against the glass. You are not here. You were never here, you are somewhere else, on the other side of whatever it is they’re showing you.
10. SNOW AT DAWN
Of the many varieties, there is only one that speaks directly to you. It lies somewhere on the other side of silence. Sun fondles its edges. Like this.
Two figures sitting in a train car full of snow. Windows blown open. One of the figures leans across the table, grazes a finger along the smaller one’s cheek. These are objects, the figure appears to be saying, objects you’ve never been taught to recognize. Have patience. We’ll describe them together.
The larger figure begins by constructing a snow sculpture. It has levers and pulleys, wheels with rims and spokes, and at its heart an intricate central mechanism resembling a bellows, which exhales clouds of ice at rhythmic intervals. The smaller figure gathers a fresh mound of snow in its hands and studiously attempts a reconstruction. This one is motionless, the bellows stopped at a midway point, like a freeze frame in a film. Undeterred, the smaller figure destroys the sculpture, begins again. The next few results are similarly flawed: missing wheels, structural instabilities. A lack of heart. The larger figure waits and watches. They still have time, the two of them; they have all the time in the world.
After several more failed attempts, the smaller figure spreads its hands on the table, tightening its face into a rageful expression. The larger figure pinches a few particles from the air and spins them into a miniature circus. Bears, monkeys, dolphins, horses, and birds of paradise circle the two sculptures, their bodies sparkling with sunlight. You’ve made a mountain, the larger figure says. What a beautiful thing.
The larger figure blows away its own sculpture.
I suppose you’ll want to know about the sky, it says. Where you came from, and all that. A long, long time ago—longer than any time you can even hold in your mind—the sky was split into three parts: color, weather, and depth. Isolated from each other in this way, each element had to make do with its own territory. Color reflected the world, and was therefore the most admired—who doesn’t love a beautiful sunset? Weather determined the shape of our days, which made us desperate to control it. We developed elaborate systems to keep track of its movements; we performed rituals, convinced ourselves that phenomena could be taken for signs. Depth, for some reason, was the least understood. No one bothered to figure out why a ball got smaller and smaller the higher you threw it, or why certain stars looked smaller than others. We were perfectly content to let the answers remain just out of reach. Then we imagined snow.
The smaller figure looks confused. It did not realize they were already approaching their destination. (Where else could that light have come from?) The larger figure stands up, extends a hand. Imagination has no solution, it continues, and the sky knew that, of course. Nothing could be done with colorless color, weatherless weather, depthless depth. And so the three parts became a whole. But even our wholeness can’t last forever.
Let’s get going, sweetheart, the larger figure says, and at this last word the lines sharpen to reveal a face. Her face. She has traveled so far just to ask you a single question.
What is wider than the sky, deeper than the sea, and bigger than the whole universe?
Don’t get too close, you’ll interrupt it.
postscript
hidden matchbox of snow
密度不是答案，只是许多可能的解决方案之一。 例如，当我拿硬币取笑这位高僧时，我走进了一扇镀银的门。 这是天堂吗？ 我问他这真的是天堂吗？ 他什么也说不出来，但我听到他说是的。 门滑开又迅速关上。 没有近距离聆听。