~ice flowers of cloudland~

November 23rd, 2008

Genius is an African who dreams up snow.
~Vladimir Nabokov

I woke yesterday morning before the sun. My sleeping habits have been quite wonky since returning, so I can say only better to wake at five than be up until five, both of which have transpired this week.
Perhaps it was the eerie silence of the first snow that woke me. First Snow! It still thrills me, even after nearly a decade passed in places with true seasons. The feeling of soft powder under your boots; the satisfying crunching that comes later. The swirling air; the flakes that melt on your cheeks. The energy it brings to this town, a sort of collective scurrying delight that makes Saturday errands all the more fun.

We started at the farmer’s market where the squash had been left in icy piles to fend for itself, and then to the video shop, where newly acquired membership secured two movies—a strange luxury after eleven months of near absence. The charming gal behind the counter sighed (really) over my selections–hand over heart–and said, Vous allez avoir un bon week-end!

I then dragged Alfonso up the hill to take in the view. He left me shortly there after, left me to fall deep into a photo-making reverie. Sometimes life is just play, in the best moments. It’s been a while since I’ve felt the hum, and it was lovely. I didn’t realize how long I’d been out until my toes were just about frozen. I didn’t realize I was being observed either, until the British bloke broke my über-focus with a question, “May I ask what you are doing?”

What I was doing was leaning over a stonewall, trying to make an image of an ivy blossom frosted with ice:

Once I observed that A. he didn’t seem creepy and B. there were other people around (yeah, okay, kids making the world’s largest snowball, lost in their own über-focus, but), I was confident I could take him down unarmed, if need be, as a NY lady anyway you do think like this, but this fellow felt kind so instead I explained my propensity for photographing plants from below, and without looking through the lens (because it’s hard to get down there, in this case impossible). You sometimes get silhouettes, or a bug-eye view, and always a good surprise. We then spoke for a while about Obama, Thatcher, his son (the aspiring actor), the glorious risk of choosing an artist’s path, Philip Seymour Hoffman’s LAByrinth Theater, the coolness of motordromes, my learning to ride a bike, his Harley. Then my toes were really frozen and so we introduced ourselves–John, Kim–and I headed home. Snow, photos, and a life-affirming talk with a stranger. Good day.

The rest of the weekend has been spent in a nesting way, cooking and puttering and learning snowflake classification: Stellar Plates, Bullet Rosettes, Radiating Dendrites, Needle Clusters, Irregulars. We’ve also been listening to the newly discovered French chanteuse Berthe Sylva, who once recorded a song called Frou Frou which is French slang for frilly or elaborately ornamented, which I ’spose could describe snowflakes.

The concern, amounting to intense desire. Solicitude. To perpetuate each masterpiece the image of each of each rare gem in the photograph, before its matchless beauty is forever lost is an experience so rare, so truly delightful that once undergone it is never forgotten and then, after the storm is over, with what eagerness the dark room is sought, do we seek the dark to develop and bring out these latent images of these wonderful crystal forms.

From the notebooks of Wilson Bentley (1865-1931)

In 1885, Wilson Alwyn “Snowflake” Bentley, a self-educated farmer in rural Jericho, Vermont, attached a bellows and camera to his microscope, created a “photomicrographic apparatus”, and brought us the first photographic images of snowflakes, which he called ice flowers (the sky he called cloudland).

He also brought, regrettably, the overworked sentiment of no two being alike, tho to his credit he made 5000 photomicrographs in his life time to support this claim.

Unsurprisingly he was known as an “odd” if gentle person. Rumor has him playing violin in the street in a snowstorm, barefoot, and entertaining villagers by imitating the sounds of animals with his violin. Personally, I can not but love a man who notated items from his collection: Three Snowflakes from the Great Blizzard of 1888.

So to come back to Nabokov. “Genius” aside–as I am more than suspicious of this notion–the quote is to me about overcoming the limits of imagination, or immediate experience–something I think a great deal about these days as I break the writers code and begin once again to write what I don’t know: Burma in the 1930s, motorcycles, carny life, Kansas.

Today I am thinking: There is more than one way to catch a snowflake.

{all snowflake images from the Buffalo Museum of Science.}