walking in a wonderous winterland

Somewhere between the front steps of a trendy gay bar and a small apartment in Astoria, something almost mystical transpired.

She pushed open the obscenely heavy door and took in the street before her. Between the tiny Asian drag queen picking a fight with the bouncer and the snow blowing sideways all she could muster was “Goddamnit.”

Up went the fur lined hood and the fierce city girl defenses. Dodging sideways looks and unctuous comments she made her way for the subway after weighing the financial consequences of a cab ride.

An untimely full bladder prompted a desperate stop into a McDonald’s populated by a 2:45 am crowd of late night snackers, snow beaten evangelists and wayward midtown spirits. Once relieved, she faced the next challenge: how long would it take for the N(ever) train to arrive?

Fortune strikes and she waits less than two minutes for her train home. She boards, and feels the mood of the exhausted straphangers around her. Once one the other side of East River she digs out her gloves, ties back her hair and dons her hood once again, ready to face the miserable 7 minute schlep through the tundra to her modest apartment.

Then, it happens. She can’t help it. The perfect one inch layer of powder on the streets is…. Lovely. The month old piles of melted and refrozen, melted and refrozen dirty snow are coated by a frosty layer of fresh snow. The sounds of the neighborhood are muffled to a peaceful near silence.

Halfway through the 7 block trek she realized her pace has slowed to a crawl. She stops at an intersection and gazes up the quiet street. She looks behind her, and is taken aback by how tiny the footprints she’s left behind her are.

As she turns on her street, she stops completely when she realizes that the only tracks on the street are hers, and, just for a moment, in a city of nine million people, she feels like a pioneer, like the first person ever to set foot on this path. She looks up at the sky, and remembers: She loves the snow. She always has. And she realizes, that this is all there is; these moments when we drop our emotional armor and find the beauty in what we have come to only know as inconvenience. And for a brief moment, it didn’t matter any more; who she was supposed to be, who she would ultimately become. It was just …. White, quiet and beautiful.