My Snow Week Project
the snow keeps piling on
When I moved to Canada, the International Students’ Association (or something like that) gave me a handbook that included a nifty calendar: one month, one page. Plenty of space in the box of every day to write about it — to prove that my life wasn’t that empty after all.
It was all many winters ago — this is the twentieth since — and I believe that I was somewhere between gently gaslighting myself and beginning to understand how much I can forget.
Yet, just as for snow that melts and crusts but can still welcome more of its own kind, erosion & addition shapes the landscape (landshapes?) of thought.
I went into December with a one-week exercise to write every day. Most, if not all, of the thoughts that ended up in these daily fragments would have evaporated by now, and I think they matter[ed] because their themes are in my brain’s heavy rotation (ah…yes, I do mean rumination).
Now on the other side of December, these seven days are a curious exhibit even for me. I’m quite proud of the level of freedom that showed up in their writing, and I’m fine with treating them like a proof (again) that there’s some elasticity in my thinking. This is the furthest that it went in 2025. (My PDA1 doesn’t mind looking back, but it’s not a fan of contemplating the future, i.e., it rejects the whole “resolutions” and “goals” thing.)
Snow Week Project: Saturday
Warning: This is going to be pretty random. Experimental diaristics, eheee.
Oh. Object permanence is a pipe dream: I have given precisely zero thought to Always Sunny in the past couple of weeks.
Snow Week Project: Sunday
About 168 hours, give or take, until scheduled take-off eastward. I haven’t seen London Heathrow (LHR) since before I became a Canadian. That was a few years ago now. Before Brexit materialized, LHR had separate EU/non-EU passport-control queues; my EU-citizen status is probably no good there anymore.
Heathrow was excellent, I have access to all of the original-language Cărtărescu that my heart could possibly desire, and my mother is also aphantasic.
Snow Week Project: Monday
Another day of “well, now that I’m dressed for work-in-person, there’s quite a bit I can/need to do from/at home.”
Yup. Mămăligă (closer to grits than to polenta, if anyone ever asks me) is where it’s at.
Snow Week Project: Tuesday
These were taken in various years of the past 15 and butchered edited using prehistoric “artistic effects” this evening.
The madness that is no-snow, 5-10 degrees Celsius Decembers at parallel 45, about 100 metres above sea level, is real. (Compare and contrast to the early 2000s: first-snows in November, sparkling fresh snow at carolling times.) No wonder that one of my high-school friends now has a banana tree.
Snow Week Project: Wednesday
Yeah, I’m not feeling today. Going through the pre-packing list — a (probably very unscientific, definitely oversimplifying) way to think about it would be “the autistic part took over”. I might use that phrase in conversation, if I sense that my interlocutor conceptualizes things this way — all while dreading that someone with whom I’ve interacted past…
I don’t miss the dive bar at all, and I’m still proud of “transmutation of rumination”.
Snow Week Project: Thursday
Bought some train tickets for Brașov. I’d say NBD, but it’s a pretty BD.
Just back from Brașov, in fact, and the experience was equally extraordinary and within my patterns for visiting new places. Definitely worth its own post.
I forgot to add pen and paper to this packing list, but that’s okay — I might edit that post when I get around to it…although editing it does seem a little bit contrary to the purpose of Snow Week, so I’m happy to simply call this paragraph right here an erratum.
Happy New Year!
pervasive/pathological drive for autonomy/demand avoidance