Deeper and Silenter

“And he had understood the situation at once- nothing could have seemed simpler – there had been snow in the night, such as all winter he had been longing for; and it was this which had rendered the postman’s first footsteps inaudible, and the later ones faint. Of course! How lovely! And even now it must be snowing – it was going to a snowy day – the long white ragged lines were drifting and sifting across the street, across the faces of the old houses, whispering and hushing, making little triangles of white in the corners between cobblestones, seething a little when the wind blew them over the ground to a drifted corner; and so it would be all day, getting deeper and deeper and silenter and silenter.”

“Silent Snow, Secret Snow” by Conrad Aiken

Autumn 1932

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Dear Alex,

Deeper and deeper we drift in days, hay fever and wonder to the rim of this year, socks and patience thinned, dust darkening our deserted trophies and desires. Our lips flutter to shut before night returns.

Where have the seconds of time, of opportunity flung? Silent seconds snuffed in secret because none is listening.

I have milled and mulled over Conrad Aiken's most recognized short story, "Silent Snow, Secret Snow" since my first discovery of it this Autumn, almost nine decades late in my reading after its publication in the same season. I lost my bearing and dove into his well of words which drown decor and etiquette. He drills into the pit of the apple of the eye to gouge it out of your illusion. His snow has sheathed me in alien consciousness, silencing my voice to listen to his, hers, yours.

No one in passing or pausing has introduced me to him: his Pulitzer- and multi-award winning poetry and prose were not spotted in my UBC English syllabi or in the New York best-seller list. Aiken snuck up to me in plain reach, tucked between pill and pillow propped under the first pages of a short-story anthology among needful things, in ink and blood and open conflict, stacks and stitches, pen and hammer, verse and man. There he was all along and for so long I have missed him.

For one to think in notes and symphony, transplanting sense and soul into white-black print, is to trudge a lifetime on silent snow, secret snow as did Aiken. He was 11 when he saw the deaths of his parents in their bedroom: father, a surgeon, had shot his mother followed by suicide. Aiken lived in trauma and trauma enlivened him through the tunnels of terror and thoughts in monologue. You don't read Aiken and abandon him. He sticks and sinks in you.

I come away bruised from his avalanche of figures and form in white stillness. I see snow shedding from sky in storm and sorrow, snow streaking on red bark and beaten breasts. I hear snow swelling in ghettos and gutter flushed with bullets. If the train were looming, it would scream at light speed, shooting snow up the inane mound of spoil and excess in our clutch, spewing ashes on heads before snow falls again in fresh loaves of longing.

And the snow in its stillness and secret hushes them all so I can begin to listen.

Yours, Kate

Autumn 2019

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Dear Kate,

This morning I was given a royal treatment: I've found myself alone in the bus, a bus there just for me, like in Totoro the Catbus for the children in distress.

It must have been riders were already "planning for alternative tomorrows with hope" that they followed through with their new PATH despite a transit strike being averted at the eleventh (more like twelve-and-a-halfth) hour.

Yesterday when I was getting off the bus I said to the driver I will see you tomorrow and he smiled and mumbled something befittingly uncertain.  He didn't want to stop working either but what could he do?  Reality washes over us.  Before that on the radio I heard a sound clip of an old man back in 2001 when the last Vancouver bus strike was into its fourth day, he, advance in age and utterly dependent on transit to exercise his final mobility, claimed (pleaded?) he still believes in miracles.  That last strike went on to last four months and killed who knows how many good things that would never come around again.

Everyday I'd arrive at work an hour early and read the Bible alone in the cafeteria.  Knowing how busy the place can be by noon and how peaceful I could have it for myself in the morning is a vision of freedom in discipline.  The Book of Job is what I was reading this week, or more like what was reading me day and night this strange season.  I could never get used to adventing towards Christmas.

“Human life is a struggle, isn’t it?
    It’s a life sentence to hard labor.
    Like field hands longing for quitting time
    and working stiffs with nothing to hope for but payday,
I’m given a life that meanders and goes nowhere—
    months of aimlessness, nights of misery!
I go to bed and think, ‘How long till I can get up?’
    I toss and turn as the night drags on—and I’m fed up!
I’m covered with maggots and scabs.
    My skin gets scaly and hard, then oozes with pus.
My days come and go swifter than the click of knitting needles,    
   and then the yarn runs out—an unfinished life!"

It's great to see you, when I boarded the bus this morning I greeted the driver, who gave me again a smile but of a very different sort.

Yours, Alex