Of Snow and Dogs and Materialists

www.frontporchrepublic.com...

The temptation to rhapsodize about the snow is pitched past pitch of joy. Outside the world whitens. True: it will be smeared with trade again soon enough and, ere that, corrupted with salt and plows and that vilest of all inventions, the snow blower, until at last this baptized world once again bears man’s smudge and wears man’s smell. But tonight it whitens. Tonight, though the earth be as scarlet, it shall be white with snow.

The snow gathers higher and higher on my pile of maple, split and stacked and ready to warm this buzzing joyous domicile. Lo! The snow mounts white on white upon the rails of my deck, the roof of my shed, the cedars across the ravine. See it swirl in the air and yet drop as the gentle dew of heaven. Its quality is not strained. How like imputed righteousness it comes to me; how like a robe of incorruption it adorns this too too sullied flesh.

It will keep doing this as long as it wants to, and, thank God, there’s not a damn thing anyone can do about it. The snow is going to do what it wants to do until it’s done doing it, and I, like Thomas Merton in his shack listening to the sheer gratuity of the rain (listening to get its meaning before someone re-means it by bottling and selling it)—I am going to listen and find out what it has to say.

Yet another great article from the FrontPorchRepublic. They definitely do have a way with words, do they not? Taking time to sit down with my laptop and scan down the pages reading their articles is a pure delight. Walking a fine line between philosophy and theology they have such eloquence with their words.

I do hope you enjoy this article!

Just my personal opinion but the turn of the century affectations are sort of grating. Honestly I had trouble getting through it. Seems like the guy can write, so just write contemporary English.

reply to post by Misoir


Good find Misoir.
Just as the passage states, snow will fall and there isn't anything we can do about it.
Some things we just can't control.

I like it.

Vivid, apt and poignant imagery! I have often felt, as I'm mowing the lawn, or when I used to clear snow, like an eraser, and that's what this passage notes -- we erase nature, to uncover man's blight. I appreciate cleared pavement when I venture out, of course, but there is something different -- were that we were uncovering the footpaths of our ancestors, rather than the manufactured surfaces that prevent our feet from mingling with the Earth, as they once did.

Thanks for the post, S&F for the morning blessing!

reply to post by Misoir

Are critics allowed on this thread? Well then,

They definitely do have a way with words, do they not?

Yes, indeed the author does have a way with words – a precious, self-conscious, faux-Victorian way, an over-the-top pastiche of the prose of Thoreau,

Often in winter days, I heard the forlorn but melodious note of a hooting owl indefinitely far; such a sound as the frozen earth would yield if struck with a suitable plectrum, the very lingua vernacula of Walden Wood (Walden)

Wilkie Collins,

The quiet twilight was still trembling on the topmost ridges of the heath; and the view of London below me had sunk into a black gulf in the shadow of the cloudy night, when I stood before the gate of my mother's cottage. (The Woman in White)

Sheridan le Fanu

I tried to comfort myself by repeating again and again the assurance, 'the thing is purely disease, a well-known physical affectation, as distinct as smallpox or neuralgia. Doctors are all agreed on that, philosophy demonstrates it. I must not be a fool.' (In A Glass Darkly)

and others of that ilk. Not the best models of Victorian prose, as it happens – you wouldn't catch George Eliot or Conrad or even Trollope writing like that. This is arch, self-consciously anachronistic and overdone. Not, I'm afraid, good writing at all. Rubbish, in fact.

Yours truly,

Materialist *$$%@**

reply to post by Astyanax


Before you can qualify yourself as a critic, I have a few questions.


When was the last time you complimented someone or something in a post? I admit I don't think I've ever seen you say anything positive, about anything.

Which brings me to my second question. What is your problem with living?

reply to post by bsbray11

When was the last time you complimented someone or something in a post?

Yesterday.

And do you know those little star things you see in the top left-hand corner of people's posts? I give away about a dozen of them a day. The last one was to Muzzleflash, an hour or so ago, in another thread in which you are trying to be clever at my expense, and failing.

I admit I don't think I've ever seen you say anything positive, about anything.

That's probably because I never have occasion to say anything positive about you. But then, given the sort of capering viciousness you tend to display towards me and others you disagree with, how should I?

Which brings me to my second question. What is your problem with living?

None whatever. Shall we return to the thread topic now, or would you like to insult me some more first?

Originally posted by Astyanax
Shall we return to the thread topic now, or would you like to insult me some more first?

I didn't insult you in the first place. I was getting around to how miserable nearly every single one of your posts are, including to others because I don't even respond to you most of the time. And you just rather happily reinforced the impression.

Maybe one day when I'm morbidly unhealthy, have no remaining friends or family, have no hope left for humanity, am severely depressed and want to change nothing about any of that, I'll be able to find satisfaction reading your posts and enjoying other peoples' misery as I try to forget my own. But until then all I can do is try to muster enough feeling, to feel sorry for you.

reply to post by bsbray11

Very well. In the meantime – just to keep the thread on topic – since you appear to disagree with my criticism of the blogger's prose style, would you care to explain why, and perhaps to try and refute it?

Originally posted by bsbray11
I was getting around to how miserable nearly every single one of your posts are, including to others because I don't even respond to you most of the time.

Though he and I have rather different perspectives on a few things, I can tell you that Astyanax is a very good person. He would question my explanation for it, but he has sent me uplifting and positive messages at times when I really needed it, and it was a real blessing for me.

On topic, I take back everything that I said yesterday. I'm currently in Austin, Texas, where Oscar the dog and I went to hide from the cold of the tundra for a bit, and we were supposed to start driving back this morning, but they got an inch (an inch!) of snow overnight and the whole city is shut down.

Get those plows out! Salt and sand away! Get this white crap off the roads so that I can start my journey home!!!