. . . who was once handsome and tall as you

"Say that my answer was, RECALLED TO LIFE."
-Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

A librarian died today.

I awoke from fevered dreams to the sound of sirens and alarms. My burned hand had made sleep intermittent and uncomfortable, and I wanted to stay in bed. However, the sound of the sirens only grew louder, so I forced myself out from under the covers to make one last trip down to the library.

Shuffling blearily down the street I was joined by throngs of other early-morning gawkers. I half-recognized most of them. They were people I'd probably passed in the street many times, but never spoken to or acknowledged. Our mindless parade was accompanied by a chorus of howling and barking, as if all the neighborhood strays were singing some cacophonous elegy.

When we reached the library, the police were already removing the body. Two of them had the black bag on a stretcher, moving laboriously through the debris and slowly dissipating smoke. In the grey haze the ruins of the library looked ancient, rather than newly destroyed. Policemen moved around, busily questioning the onlookers. Did you know the victim? No one seemed to.

When it was my turn, I asked the bored-looking officer who the victim was. The librarian, he said, did you know her? I told him no and he moved on. The librarian. No was too simple an answer. But then, the police probably didn't care that she had berated me for bringing food into her domain or once debated the relative importance of the number two. After all, I'd never even learned her name.

The only person to answer the policemen's question in the affirmative was a young woman in yellow pajamas. I'd have thought I would have noticed before if anyone else worked at the library, but apparently I'd managed never to notice her before. After the woman's brief questioning, she wandered about in a daze, only stopping to ask a medic a question.

How should I feel?

I watched as she was brushed off and left to aimlessly drift deeper into the ruins. It wouldn't do any good to talk to her. I had nothing to say. But a few minutes later, I followed, finding her huddled in a corner with a salvaged book.

What was her name? I asked.

She looked up, blinking as though I'd shone a bright light into her eyes. She put down the book, The Search for Intelligent Life, and spoke.

Oh, she said, Edith. Edith E. Evans.

I'll try to remember that, I said.

What's your name?

Jack F. Alwyn.

You're not bad, Jack. I'm Macy. What do you do?

I make snow, I said, snow machines. Ones that make real snow. At least, I'm trying to. It's not easy, you know?

I know. I wait for aliens. It's not easy either.

Aliens? What will you do if they don't show up?

She furrowed her brow, pondering the question. She bit her lip, and her finger nails, and finally looked back at me.

Well, she started, I suppose . . . I suppose it's just important that they know, that if they come, if they wanted to come, that is, that they'd know they would be welcome.

She picked up her book again and resumed reading. I left her alone, left the ruins, left the dregs of the crowd, and returned to my apartment. Waiting where I had left it, the machine dominated the cramped room. Pipes and wires and laptop screens culminated in a great bubble of glass at the center of my apartment. The globe was big enough for a man to walk inside of.

For something so arduous to construct, it was simple to start. One click of a mouse was all it took. Everything hummed to life, a mechanical symphony of clicks and whirs. Soon, crystalline flakes were trickling into the sphere. Timid and alone at first, they were quickly joined by flurries of their fellows, then gusts. Within the hour, a snowstorm raged within the giant globe.

Thousands of microscopic cameras, arranged in nets around the room, recorded each and every flake as it fell. Instantaneously, these images were transmitted to the laptops, the photos swiftly flitting across the screens as they were analyzed, checked, and cross-checked. They were verifying what I already felt to be true, that each new snow flake was unique.

I watched the contained maelstrom through the night, long past the point when sufficient data had been gathered. It was beautiful, and like so many beautiful things, dangerous.

It was tempting me. The thought of entering that perfect sphere was nearly irresistible. Only a few steps separated me from an eternity spent among infinite new worlds. A universe of forms forever shifting, dying and being reborn as something new. A universe removed from spouses, children, and incomprehensible neighbors. It would be so easy.

And yet, I lived in a world where librarians could be murdered.

Maybe I knew something other people didn't, this secret beauty, but even that didn't entitle me to leave. Not yet. Such a world won't tolerate inaction.

There was nothing for it. With a sigh, I turned off the machine. Suddenly I couldn't keep my eyelids open; I was exhausted. Curling up in a ball on the floor I fell into a deep, oceanic sleep. I drempt I swam in the sea of the young Earth as a single celled organism; fatherless, motherless, born of lightning and inert matter.

A few short hours later, I was awoken by the rising sun. I got up, loaded a USB flash drive with the snow machine's blueprints and the results of the previous night's experiment. Then I gathered up my few remaining funds, the apartment key, and headed downstairs.

The doorman was back at his post. I handed over my key and the cash to pay for my rent. Only a few small bills remained. The doorman asked if I would need help removing my boxes.

No, I said. Everything I needed was in my pocket, in my flash drive. The machine, the boxes made of mashed up trees, all the papers and notes and photos crammed in those boxes; none of that was necessary anymore. I thanked the doorman for his offer and walked to the lobby's exit.

I went through the door and came out on the other side.

Dragon Burns, Badger Dances

"'Nobody's gonna read it now,' Hoshino said. 'I don't know what was written in it, but it's all gone. A bit of shape and form has disappeared from the world, increasing the amount of nothingness.'"
-Haruki Murakami, Kafka On The Shore

I had a pattern now.

Each day I spent at the library; reading, dozing off, getting lost in the words without a trail of breadcrumbs. Each night I spent in my apartment; feverishly working, testing, creating new connections and complexities. Progress was being made, everything was going according to plan.

As I left that morning the doorman was missing from his habitual post. I wonder where he is, if today is his day off. Does he have days off?

The first sign of trouble was the badger. Tanuki, of the family Mustelidae, is running wild up the street in zig-zagging, haphazard movements. There is terror in his eyes. I stand back to let him pass, afraid he might bite me if provoked. Where is his master now?

The second sign of trouble was a man. Dirty and unkempt, he strides with purpose down the street. I've seen him before, I think, but hunched over, muttering to himself by the side of the road. He's still wearing the same rags, but now he stands tall, holds his sign up high. THE END IS NIGH. He's hollering something, filling his chest with air and releasing torrents, machine-gun bursts, of speech.

It's over, he says, it's time to give up. The end is here. Finally we can all go to sleep, lay down our heads and die, stick your heads in the sand, or in a paper bag, if you think it will help. It won't help. The end is here. It's just around the bend. Come and get it! That's right, the end is here. Game over.

I get out of his way, and continue down the street. I can smell something now, a festive smell, the smell of summer cookouts, but it isn't summer. I quicken my steps, turn the corner of Mercy, and see the fire.

The library is burning. I'm running now, and, as I get closer I see that's not quite true. The books are burning. It's a massive billowing fire, and naked women are dancing around it; a pagan ritual in the city streets. I stand transfixed.

They are singing, and dancing, and yelling, and throwing books and fuel into the fire. They are as wild as the Furies. They sing a song I can't recognize, some incantation of dark power. Slowly I move closer to the inferno, and the chanting resolves itself into words.

What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

Now I see there are other people here too. An old woman. It's the librarian. She's attacking the fire-makers with an umbrella.

What can make me whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

I've never seen her move so fast. She's screaming, but it does no good. Her umbrella catches fire, forcing her to retreat. I should be helping, I want to help, but I don't know what to do.

Oh, precious is the flow that makes me white as snow.

I'm only a few feet from the fire now. The dancing, singing women ignore me. They just circle and circle. I stare into the flames, the all-consuming, mindless destroyer. I only wanted to read a book. I watch it eat the words, the patterns of letter and meaning. It's insatiable, always eating. It's eating my pattern too, and it's done it before. But this time I cry.

No other fount I know, nothing but the blood of Jesus.

Through the distortion of my tears, I see something. The two. There it is, swiftly turning into ash and cinders. My feet can move again, and they move even closer to the fire. The women notice my presence, they push and jostle me. Heedless, I move forward until the heat threatens to burn my eyebrows.

I thrust my right hand into the fire.

I feel no pain. I'm grasping, gasping, searching. Then I feel it between my fingers, precious impermanent paper, and I'm pulling up and out. The book is in my hand, but so is the fire. Just like I learned in elementary school, I stop, drop and roll. The world spins around me; a vortex of concrete, fire, and moving bodies. I don't stop until I feel the pain.

Terrible, wonderful pain. I hold my hand out in front of me, just as charred and mangled as the book it holds. That gargoyle's fist can't belong to me, but the pain tells me it does.

I sat there a long while, without thought or motion, only dimly aware of my surroundings.

Eventually, slowly, like an old man, I used my left hand to push myself up, off the concrete. There was nothing left here for me, nothing to be done. I hobbled back down Mercy, clutching the useless copy of A Tale of Two Cities, its title barely readable. Behind me, the singing faded, but the pain did not.

I entered the apartment building, glad the doorman was not there to witness my shame. Stiffly, I climbed the stairs and walked down the hall to my door. Once there, I carefully ripped a piece from the cover of the book and lodged it between two of the three remaining apartment numbers. Standing back, I read it aloud:

1 1 Two 3

Interlude II

"Day after day / Alone on a hill / The man with the foolish grin is keeping perfectly still."
- The Beatles, The Fool on the Hill

That night I worked on the machine.

I loved the feel of the pipes and wires in my hand.

The were fitting together, there was a harmony here.

Each piece would be a part of a greater whole; something vibrant, alive, and they were already vibrating in anticipation.

Or perhaps my hands were shaking.

I knew with certainty this would be my last attempt.

I was close now, and I was not afraid.




Wikipedia has this to say on the subject of snow. Snow, it says, is a type of precipitation within the Earth's atmosphere in the form of crystalline water ice, consisting of a multitude of snowflakes that fall from clouds. Since snow is composed of small ice particles, it is a granular material. It has an open and therefore soft structure, unless packed by external pressure. Snowflakes come in a variety of sizes and shapes.

This is what it doesn't say. To make a snowflake is the hardest thing in the Universe. A real snowflake. Not a knock-off, a fake, a pretender. A truly unique pattern of frozen water molecules. Something beautiful. Only one thing is more difficult: infinite snowflakes.

A snowflake is much like a person. I used to tell myself that sometimes. It was a banal platitude, so easily torn down, so flimsy and without meaning. A person cannot be a snowflake, but perhaps - perhaps a person can make a snowflake.

And so tomorrow I will continue . . .

Nothing At All

- Bill Waterson, Calvin and Hobbes



My feet carried me to the library all by themselves.

Nice out today, the doorman said as I left Wilshire. He was right. Blue skies and warm weather forced me out of my customary sweatshirt.

On the way there I passed an odd woman on the sidewalk. Something told me she was the one, the one who'd taken the two. And yet, my feet kept going, unperturbed.

What kind of January is this? I said to the librarian when I entered. An attempt at casual conversation.

She stared at me, squinted one eye. Maybe she was contemplating ordering me out of the library again. Maybe she wasn't used to being asked about the weather.

The kind that kills, she said.

What?

Plants. Kills plants. They'll all thinks it's Spring, and sprout out of their little hiding places and then, sooner than you can say Thanatos, it'll be cold and they'll die. They'll freeze, and whither, and die cold, lonely little deaths.

Without further comment, she returned to shuffling a stack of papers on her desk. Paperwork, I supposed, though she didn't seem to be making any move to do anything with it other than shuffle it round and round until the end of the world.

I spent the next few hours aimlessly wandering the library. No research project today; not on water molecules or numbers or any other ephemera. Just picking books at random from the shelves, examining covers, author names, trying to pick something to read. They say you can't judge a book by its cover, but you don't really have any other choice.

Eventually I settled on one with a blurry image of someone's face on the cover. He was wearing glasses, but where the eye should have been, instead there were the waves of the ocean. Finding a warm corner to sit in, I began to read. It was a story about a Japanese kid. He was running away from home. I read and read.

At first I promised myself I'd go back to work on my project after a few hours, but I couldn't draw myself away from the book. I couldn't draw myself away from not doing anything. I smiled, stretched, inhaled the book smell, and gave in to temptation.

As the pages and hours crept by I could feel the heat slowly pulling down my eyelids . . . I fell asleep . . . and dreamed of nothing at all.

And Back Again

“The Road goes ever on and on / Down from the door where it began. / Now far ahead the Road has gone, / And I must follow, if I can, / Pursuing it with eager feet, / Until it joins some larger way / Where many paths and errands meet. / And whither then? I cannot say.”
-J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

The days have been normal ones. Each day I still eat my breakfast, and each day I still make my way down to the library, though only today have I managed to write anything. The sky is still there, hanging above this forgotten city, perhaps just barely managing not to scrape the top of Wilshire Tower, but yet still managing.

It seemed when I arrived as though this were a place at the edge of the world, a stack of plates spinning on a stick on a clown’s finger. One would need only a small nudge to send everything careening down into shards of shattered china. Things didn’t fit together right here, all the patterns were wrong, and the seams were tearing. Now I know I was wrong.

The end of the world did happen, but the scenery is just the same. The sky hasn’t fallen, the tower still stands, even the carnival will outlast me, it seems. No, even I am still here.

The day after I was delirious, it’s true. I went to the library, searching in a daze. I asked the librarian if there was a book about two. She told me they had One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish if I wanted it, and asked me what I meant by all this. I told her two was important, but she didn’t listen to me. I don’t remember what else she said.

Yesterday, I finally went back to the carnival. I had tried for three days, but each time something stopped me. I saw a battered old man by the side of the road one day, a sick man coughing there the second, and on the third a wild-eyed preacher tossing sermons to the wind. Each one of these repulsed me in a way no street-side vagrants ever had before. Maybe I was scared of them, or maybe I was scared of the street they traveled on. When I looked at them I could see ten to the eighteenth water molecules in dizzying arrangement, and it was a terrifying vision. This time though, the fear did not stop me, or perhaps it drove me onward, as I went to the carnival.

Once again I stopped before the Fortune Teller’s tent and thought to step inside. Before me, the purple canvas rustled with the unknown.

In Schrodinger’s famous thought experiment a cat is placed in a box. Inside the box is a poison gas cartridge that has a perfectly even chance of going off immediately or never going off at all. The question is, before we open the box, is the cat alive or is it dead? The answer is, in equal measure, both. That is until the box is opened. Once reality is observed it cannot be undone.

The tent was another one of Schrodinger’s boxes. While I remained outside my life was still an infinite branching of quantum universes. Entering would collapse the waveform. I saw this and stumbled backwards, allowing myself to sit beneath a small tree. It was a parking lot tree, contained within its square, held steady by metal wires, but it was also the tree from which our eons-great-grandparents descended to the African plain. It was the tree from which Eve stole an apple, and the tree under which Newton tried to nap. For a moment everything was still and clear.

Some time later, a trumpet played, heralding the end of the calm. I arose, filled with the restless energy of the well rested. Swiftly, lightly, I walked down the road to my apartment, and set to work.

I toiled long that night. My only companion was the intermittent lightning. How appropriate, to be accompanied by such Promethean pyrotechnics, traditional music of the mad scientist. The crackling energy of its melody echoed my joy.

The Adventure of the Missing Two

“Stand at the window here. Was ever such a dreary, dismal, unprofitable world? See how the yellow fog swirls down the street and drifts across the dun-coloured houses. What could be more hopelessly prosaic and material? What is the use of having powers, Doctor, when one has no field upon which to exert them?”
- Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Sign of the Four

Up. Mop up, clean up, wash up, get up. Those were the first things I did.

The second thing I did was notice that the two was gone. As of this week I live in apartment “11_3.” There was something wrong about that. Much more wrong than the simple theft of a rusted metal digit, if theft it was. Yet that must have been what it was, of this I was unreasonably convinced.

How else to explain that it was the only missing number? And even if, in the commotion after the black out, it had somehow been knocked off my door, who would have removed it and the screws that once held it in place?

Two is an important number. It is the only prime number that is also even. In nature everything seems to come in twos. Light and dark. Positive charge and negative charge. Matter and antimatter. Male and female. So too in mythology. Heaven and Hell. Sky and earth. Mind and body. Life and death.

We have two hands, and two eyes, two feet, and two kidneys. There are two sides to every coin, and every argument. You need two people to have a marriage.

“Got a problem Mr. Alwyn?”

“My two’s been stolen,” I say before I look at my interrogator.

The boy has a thoughtful look on his face. He’s holding the same useless clipboard and wearing the same ridiculous over-sized suit as he was my first day at Wilshire Tower.

“Looks like a Mystery to me.” He says it with a capital M.

“You know,” I say, “You’re right. It is a mystery.”

“Are you a detective Mr. Alwyn?”

“Kind of,” I say. “A detective who only solves mysteries no one else cares about.”

“Well then this will be perfect! Who else would care about the location of your two?”

“Good point,” I say and I begin to wander off, unsure of my direction. The flip flop of Braxton Chamber’s clown shoes follows me like a cartoon echo of my steps.

“Except for me, of course!” He says. A serious look crosses his face. “Inspector Alwyn, can I be your deputy?”

“Detectives don’t have deputies, that’s for sheriffs,” I say, but the way he looks down at his toes and twists his mouth stops me from continuing. I wonder how many times he paced by my door that morning, waiting for me to exit, to notice what was missing, to enlist his aid in this very important mission. Possibly he had planned for the chance that I wouldn’t notice, had readied sly ways to draw my attention to the empty space on my door.

Well, I had nothing better to do.

I followed my odd guide on a wandering path through the building. As we explored I realized how little of Wilshire Tower I’d actually seen. Each floor had its own character. Seven was probably a full half of a foot lower down on the east end than the west end. On floor five I thought they’d installed new wallpaper, until I realized the green pattern was most likely organic.

Thirteen seemed to have its own floor plan entirely, as though the architect forgot about it until the last minute and had to improvise. This may not be so far from the truth, as the elevator doesn’t seem to go to floor thirteen. Instead we were forced to use the stairs, or at least the sixty percent of them that weren’t almost rotted through.

Luckily, Braxton knew which ones were safe. I waited before following him, watching him jump up the stairs nimbly and assuredly in a demented game of hopscotch.

On each floor we visited, Braxton would choose a room at random and knock – a surprisingly solid knock. Then he would wait, coughing importantly until the door was answered, when would squint his eyes and look up at the wary tenant.

“My associate,” he would say, “is missing his two.”

There might be a response, but even if there wasn’t he would go on.

“I’d just like to ask you a few questions.”

Next was the part where variations were allowed.

“Mr. Marconi,” he might say, “what is your favorite color?” Or “Mr. Oedkirk, have you frequented the antiques store lately?” Or "Captain Alex, were you aware that Mr. T is not, in fact, the official Fruit Loops mascot?"

Eventually our investigations led us to the basement, beneath all the residential floors. At first the doorman didn’t want to give Braxton the keys, but I stepped in.

“I’m looking for something,” I said.

At this the doorman nodded knowingly. He gave me the scratched up old key, and we entered the dark.

Down there waited a labyrinth of pipes and old mops and ancient asbestos stalactites. Our only light emanated from Braxton’s pocket flashlight.

Its beams sent the shadows running guiltily along the walls, as though they were hiding something from us. Occasionally, he would stoop down to better examine a “clue” and everything else would be plunged into total darkness.

I found myself truly playing along with Braxton’s fantasy. I looked at his clues, followed his zigzag march through the basement. As we went I imagined who the perpetrator might be. Man or woman? Woman I decided. Maybe she was some kind of Jungian shadow aspect of myself, trying to sow chaos and disorder in my life.

All I knew for sure was that I was suddenly caught up in this mad child’s game. I felt alive, something I wasn’t expecting so soon after my failed experiment. And then I knew what I had to do.

“Listen, Braxton,” I say, “Thank you for your help, but, uh, I’ve got to follow a lead. You keep a lookout for anything suspicious around Wilshire, okay?”

He nods and leads me back up the rickety steps, back out into the light. I lock the basement door behind us.

“I’m glad I could help,” he says as I walk away. “You’re not such a bad guy after all.”

I walked out into the rain and to the payphone, where I rung up Emilie’s cell phone number. It rings, and rings and then there it was: the familiar voice, the one I’d heard so many times before.

It was saying, “Your message has been forwarded to the automatic voicemail messaging system of,” and then a recording of my daughter’s voice said, “Emilie Alwyn” and I hung up. A few quarters later, it’s ringing again. This time Emilie picks up.

“Dad,” she says, “Why are you calling me in the middle of class?”

“I, uh,” I say, “I love you Emmy.”

Silence on the other side.

”Uh, I mean,” I say, grasping for a more concrete purpose, “Look, uh, they’ve set up a carnival near the apartment I’m staying in. I know how much you love carnivals… why don’t you come visit me after school today?”

“Dad,” she says. “I’m eleven.” A pause, and then, “Look, I’ll text mom about it.”

”Ok. Great! Now…”

”Uh-oh, gotta go.” And she was gone.

I fidgeted in my apartment the whole rest of the afternoon, wondering what I should do, how I would know whether Emilie was even coming. I jumped when I heard the knock on my door, and rushed to open it.

“Nice place, dad.”

“Hey! Yeah… not exactly a palace, I guess. It’s wonderful to see you though!”

“So what about this carnival?”

There was something magical about it. On the surface I could see how grimy everything was. I could see how rickety the rides were, probably held together by Elmer’s glue. And, of course, it was still raining lightly. But there was… something.

Maybe it was the way the flickering, colored lights multiplied in the puddles so that it looked like we were surrounded by flocks of electric fairies. Or maybe it was the way the dull lot behind the library had been transformed, if only for a week, into a miniature kingdom of whirling, hurly-burly rides. Maybe it was that Emilie and I were the only people at the carnival that rainy afternoon.

For all her pretense over the phone, she enjoyed the carnival just as much at eleven as she did at ten. We rode and we talked, but I can’t remember what about. Middle school probably. The problems with her teachers, and her sister, and the boys in her classes. After weeks apart, it was just good to be reassured that she didn’t hate me.

At one point, we walked by the fortune telling booth. For a moment I was tempted, but I don’t believe in fate, and if I did, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t want to know mine.

I walked her back to the subway station she had used to come visit me. She was so young to be taking it alone.

“I can’t believe she let you come by yourself,” I said.

“Oh yeah,” Emilie said, “Well, mom gave me pepper spray. She wasn’t going to let me go originally, but I promised to give you this. Go figure.”

She handed me a stuffed, sealed envelope. I walked her down to the train, and watched her disappear into the tunnel before I opened the envelope.

I read, didn’t believe what I read, then carefully placed the papers back inside the envelope, placed the envelope into my pocket. Tomorrow, it wouldn’t be true anymore, couldn’t be, but I knew, empirically, it would be.

The letter inside said: “My lawyer has drawn everything up. All you have to do is sign, and it’ll all be over, painless as possible. You’ll see I’ve been very generous, and I think you’ll find everything is in order.” Beneath it, as promised, were the divorce papers.

I stumbled back, passed the doorman without even a nod, and returned to my apartment. As I entered, I saw the two was still missing.

Interlude

"Hello Darkness my old friend / I've come to talk to you again."
- Simon and Garfunkel, The Sound of Silence

That night I finished the new machine.

It was ready, and I was ready.

There had been too many false starts, too many disasters.

This time it would be right, it would work, and no one would be hurt.

But first I had to shave.

I had to shave off all the hairs, all the years: the grey ones, then the brown ones, and then the blond ones, until all that was left was pale pink skin.

It is 7:59 PM and I am ready to be reborn.

I've connected everything: hose to the machine, wires to laptops, laptops to machine, pipe to pipe, everything.

Now I begin, I flip the switch that sends the signal to the laptops which sends the signal to the machine which stutters and sparks and, finally, lives.

For a moment I hear the low throbbing hum of my childhood summer nights: the sound of an electric fan, the sound of the Universe.

For a moment I can see them being born, the tiny worlds in the metal womb.

They are beautiful and new and then it is 8:00 PM and everything implodes.

The lights stutter.

There is a blinding noise, and then a deafening light, and then darkness.

I am surrounded by its claws and the acrid smoke and the antifreeze and water that is gushing from my stillborn universe, mixing with my tears and misery.

"What the hell was that?"
"It's the aliens!"
"The power's out!"

Wikipedia has this to say on the subject of snow. Snow, it says, is a type of precipitation within the Earth's atmosphere in the form of crystalline water ice, consisting of a multitude of snowflakes that fall from clouds. Since snow is composed of small ice particles, it is a granular material. It has an open and therefore soft structure, unless packed by external pressure. Snowflakes come in a variety of sizes and shapes.

This is what it doesn't say. Snowflakes begin high above the world. They are microscopic, frigid, identical. Eventually, they become too heavy for their areal birthplace. Then they fall. They fall. The falling is important. As they fall they accumulate water molecules. Every snow flake does this. Ten to the Eighteenth water molecules. What you should remember is the pattern. Where they fall, when they fall, the humidity and temperature of the atmosphere as they travel; these things determine the pattern. By the time a snowflake reaches the earth, traveled its meandering path, it is unique among all other snowflakes. In this way, I used to tell myself, a snow flake is much like a person.

A snowflake is much like a person. Like a battered motivational poster, I still tell myself that sometimes, but now I've learned the crucial difference. Every snowflake has a pattern you can see, a pattern you can understand. Every snowflake is beautiful.

And so tomorrow I will start again...