Such a name is jokingly brought up in
these parts because mostly everyone here is white. Though I think there is
something to be said of the aesthetics that are raised from such a title, which
can be quite fitting for this place in the winter. Here it grows very cold.
Profoundly cold. The cold is everywhere. One steps outside and is struck by the
cold: it pulls at one’s body all over, as if seeking to plunge the world in its
monolithic frigidity. It lingers in one’s legs and arms long after coming in
from the snow. It takes time to warm, and even then, there are pockets of the
cold lingering about the house. It would take enormous amounts of energy to
eradicate it all. It brings to mind science fiction accounts of those Martian
settlers who complain that the sand is everywhere, all the time.
Of course, there are places further north
that are even colder and whiter, given such criteria, but this place grows
quite cold and quite white in the winter, which is enough.
But there’s great beauty in this total
cold, and the total whitening of the landscape. The landscape glows white, even
at night, and in the sun, the snow shimmers as each individual flake melts
away, only to be reconstituted over night with fresh snow.
It’s almost the opposite of striving
life: whereas in life you have pockets of energy seeking to consolidate
themselves and perpetuate themselves, here you have a monolithic cold death, a
negative force seeking to stop everything in its movement, draining its color.
And yet we coexist. Life indirectly supports itself. Rabbits burrow under the
shed to keep warm, deer chew on plants striving to survive, their external
brown shoots hiding the fact that under the frozen ground they are insulated
and subsisting with thriving green roots.
Best to leave the rest to images. Textures this time.
