Snow swirling, ice and complete, drifing deep - the six, the eight, the twelve inches.
It snowed in Madison today. A practical blizzard. We accumulated in the course of a day more snow than we've seen all year so far... probably anywhere between six to eight inches.
Outside it's piled up in drifts of nearly 12+ inches in some places. So, naturally, I was drawn again out into the night.
With the aim to smoke my pipe and go on a bit of a stroll I wrapped myself up in a non-conventional winter attire: my moccasins, a sweater, two polarfleece jackets, hat, and a pair of polar fleece sleep-pants that often have the dual purpose of providing me with leg coverings on long sunday afternoons. So clothed, I crashed into the swirling cloud of orangy-brown night.
The moccasins were instantaneously a blast to run with in the snow, so I took off at a sprint up the hill. At the far side and a few hundred feet later I smoked my pipe (which, I may say was most enjoyable) and sang a suprisingly heartfelt version of "Whipping Post".
I ran some more.
Feet thumping pockets in the snow. I ran and clicked my heels and stopped and wheezed a little and then walked and ran and slipped through a fence and then listened and then back through the fence and then ran and then walked some more, said, "Evenin'.", sprinted several hundred feet, vaulted up some stairs, hid from a bus just for fun and then proceded to crash down a very snowy bank to view with a certain joy the sledders on the hill at Liz Waters.
By this point I was feeling a joy larger than I had felt for a very long time. It was the next chain of events, however, that I truly feel sent me into a new state of feeling and preception than I had grasped before.
Crashing back up the rear side of Bascom Hill, I was met by the familiar white glow of one of the elderly and proud lamps that light the steps between Ingram and Van Vleck halls. The snow at this place was thrown through such eddies of air that it was simply irresistable to view. I was ensnared.
Standing below the light was at first was heartwarmingly "beautiful". We've all seen flakes of snow swirl in Wisconsin, a intricate dance of incalcuable complexity.
But suddenly, I was struck. Focusing only on the patterns of the eddies of air around the lamp and the bright silvery flashes of the flakes, I saw only the flashing streaks of tinsel.... the product of motion. No longer were the single flakes visible, only their physical spectrums through time.
It was like standing beneath a turbulent rapids and looking up to the sky... very much like the water, the snow bubbled and broke around the pole, one source of resistance for the billowing waves of silver flashes before me.
After so long standing motionless under the light I began to realilize that I, too, was part of this scene, this all-encompassing beauty. I felt the eddies around my body and the snow and flakes billowing around me. Concentrating on that feeling of the air parting around me, I closed my eyes.
Imagining roots eminating from both feet, I pushed into the earth. With each deep breath I was growing down into the ground, around rocks, branching and spreading my roots into an immense structure. I touched the ground with each nerve of the root system and I felt anchored to that spot like I was meant to be there and I was meant to be part of this moment of the earth. I felt that at that point in time that I was alive and I was engaged in the happenings of the earth and could feel the realationships between every particle of my being and those particles rushing past me and thumping deep below me.
I opened my eyes and the first thing I saw was the silver flashes of the snow. But furthermore, I saw the other lights on the hill arranged just so - I felt their distances and relationships with each other with my eyes, I percieved the depth of the orange-brown night reaching up though the cloud of flakes... I saw the brickwork of the hill mesh into the pattern of the snow... it was like I had turned my perceptions on to some super sensitive mode and yet I was completely at rest. I urged my heart to be the shapes of the snow.... and it WAS. I felt all the fluxuations and turbulences in myself and through me and around me, and then I simply laughed out loud.
I took a deep breath after that. I was still feeling sharpened but pulled my eyes away to look down at my feet... they had been covered with snow - quite actually buried during the progress of time. I felt the snow on my shoulders piled high, and my sleeves white with the collected flakes. I breathed deep again and thanked the night over and over and I felt honored to have been given the opportunity to experience what I had.
With chin held high, I left that spot, walking straight back up the stairs, though the drifts, now knee high, now to ankle. As I walked I felt the sting of the wind sending flecks of snow onto my hands and face. My hands, exposed for a long time, were cold but I "pushed" the heat up from the middle of me out to the fingers and they were warm. As I walked, when my hands became too cold, I repeated this process, concentrating on my fingers and sending out a pulse of warmth that I could wash all the way out to the very tips of my fingers.
As I passed a glossy window of Birge hall I caught my reflection and stepped closer to look at myself. My shoulders were piled high with snow, my sleeves and socks were frosted and my face was coated in flakes - so much so that I looked as if I had aged to become an old man. It was a coating of a white beard and I said to myself that I had become some sort of prophet or seer or sage of sorts and made an informal promise to remember this day.
I came to Chadbourne and laughed inwardly as I stepped indoors. Even as the ice melted away from my face in the elevator several socialite girls exchanged nervous compliments of each others purses. I squeezed my eyes closed and felt the warm rush of my realizations wash over me. I didn't care if my face was covered in dew... in fact, I almost found it funny coming back to the warmth of the building and all the eyes of my fellow college kids and their modern lifestyles.
My experience this evening was one of the most accute spiritual experience I've had to date (probably second to my bonding with the mountain with which I share a name - which is, of course, an entirely different story), and the strongest of the series of perceptually stimulating sessions I have had the joy to experience here at Madison. I feel that I found a sense of connectedness and place tonight. I feel that I am woven into the fabric of this time and it is exciting to feel able to melt into my surroundings that I am so essentially a part of.
Personally, I feel that in today's modern world people are not able to percieve and feel like they should and most people block out the beauty in their lives because they are busy or tired. If I could ALWAYS be aware of the things around me and percieve the intricacies of my surroundings I would be the wisest and most tranquil person on this earth. Every person could benefit from the sharpened eye... it's not like it's anything extrordinary, but when you practice and FEEL you really can go amazing places and begin to understand what it is to encompass and to be encompassed to billow away and to remain steadfast and anchored... to realize the relationships between things and their motions relative to other things and moreover oneself... and most amazingly to feel the motion of those things, to feel those intrinsic relationships through oneself and in oneself, that is the purpose of practicing the sharpened Eye. Seriously, I'm not even close to kidding here.
It's still snowing.
•∞•
"Don't tell me these things. I'm not ready to hear these things."
"I can tell that your heart wants to hear all the tales of all the centuries. Why does your mind stand in the way of this?"
"All is well when there is no change... turn the horizon and people will naturally be dizzy."
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