Where were you when everything was magic and the snow was glue on my fake leather shoes? Where were you when I could care less about another coat of redundant white madness on my car's windshield? Sometimes an emotion can carry the weather. It might not mean much, to the outside eye, but I can melt any frostbite with the smile on my face right now. If we had winters like this with regularity, I am sure we would know the magic of frost. Arctic winds chill more than just bones, in January. There is a deadening of the sense of adventure, of hot tempers of youth when windchill can take your breath away before you have the chance to express that ripe emotion rupturing through your chest at a moment's notice. Tonight is different, let us be sure of that before anything else: the snowflakes fall like lazily crusted orchid petals falling into frigid pools of magnetic slush amidst the arc sodium lanterns of our 21st century. How can you lay down, in mere words, the sensibilities of pure emotion? A thousand snowflakes for every thought, a puddle builds a feeling that gets lost after one treads in it and casually moves on.
Over-analyzing, too much thinking can sully the moment. It is best to live and breathe on that emotion, to walk lock step in that moment, to ride it out. How can we maintain? For every breaking wave of feeling we need a replacement surge of lust to fill the void we have created with our thought. Assimilating that emotion into our conscious thought drains its energy: from purity into mind pablum. The tyranny of reason prevents us from understanding the full brunt of our experiences: indeed, it is "understanding" itself that is the problem. Our filters are locked too rigidly on short-term goals, we fail to see the beauty of the snowflakes raining down on us when we walk home through the slush. Sometimes it takes something beyond ephemeral to break us from the spell of our mental sets. The common domesticated cow will not know the meaning of "freedom" when the barbwire fence is broken: its spirit is too simple, too molded, too crushed.
Haven't you ever wanted to capture an emotion? In a photograph, a song, some words on paper (or screen, as it may be)? What is this holding on to the sudden we long for? Are the psychologists right when they merely point to our the temporary high of an injection of seratonin? What is the mechanism for this injection? What are the thought processes that trigger this chemical release? Scientists are silent as of yet-- perhaps there will come a day when neuropsychology can map the unconscious mind itself-- until then, we are stuck with poetry. "Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art! Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes. Why preyest thou upon the poet's heart, Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?" Can we get past this notion of "discovery" and start thinking of the world as shaped by our own eyes? Thou must alterest what is touched by thine eyes. The light from your own prejudices can colour the smallest nuance in your day to day life. Let us remember when we say "we see each see the world in a different way" to be literal.
