niceporch wrote:When I was a child, there was a game I loved to play. It was a game of my own invention, but I'm certain other children made it up themselves too. This lovely game pleased me more than any toy I ever owned or person I ever knew. Where it snowing at night, I would flick on the outside light, crash out the door, and slide across the snow. There I was in a circle of white light surrounded by total darkness. I would stare up and into the bright light on the house until the pattern and imperfections in the glass bulb cover achieved microscopic clarity. The falling snowflakes, only visible in the cone of light, appeared as if out of thin air from above, and I would follow a selected volume of them from their point of emergence down to the ground. My head would move slowly down and then quickly back up and over again and again. As I followed the swarming mass of snowflakes through the air, I would try to pick out one snowflake in particular -- one snowflake that was so unremarkable, so average, so indistinguishable. It was an act of mathematical randomness. It was the snowflake that won the cosmic lottery. I would select it with a sort of camera-flash quickness and follow it for its short life. In that second, I would remember how it moved and the way it shimmered and how it fit into the pattern of all the other snowflakes around it. When the chosen snowflake was out of sight, I would try my best to remember it. Then I would say to that snowflake - Snowflake, I will remember you forever just because I chose you. Then, I'd go back inside. And I might remember that snowflake for a day. Maybe a few days. But I still thought that was something. And that something was a beautiful, unexplained significance.
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i;'ve been there too. i think this was what made life interesting, after being born. just at first to notice something. frankly, before this, i don't remember much. not that it wasn't interesting, just that nothing really stood out. and then. that flash that you describe. for me it was a fire taht set my house on fire. i remember that night, when the candle set the radio on fire, and my mother hustled us out towards the outhouse and the winter outside. first memory.
Posted: Wed Oct 21, 2009 9:04 pm