The Snowflake Collector – 4: And He Had Many Memories

The Snowflake Collector was a lone man, but he was not lonely. He had in Yanosh a friend and in Yolanda a friendly face, and he had many memories, some solidifying like ice that is formed by the weight of the snow in the glacier and others fading like snowflakes alighting atop a meadow too early in the year, or too late, and melting away with the first rays of the sun, much as the first snow in October had already melted and was now no more, and no less, than a harbinger, that had been and gone, of what was to come. And also of what was to go: it would come and cover the earth and the path and the mind for much longer soon, throughout the winter and into spring, but go it eventually would. But during those cold months this year for the first time, and in all coming years left him for as many times as were in the gift of his existence, he would now collect snowflakes. The cows in that meadow he could see from the very small window in the very thick wall of the inn, which had already been covered once, briefly, with snow, looked forlorn now, a little, but also quite safe, because they were already near their barn and soon they would disappear in there for the winter.

He considered, while Yanosh went online with his smartphone to look up ‘how to collect snowflakes’ on the connected brain of the world, how each snowflake was perhaps like a memory, and that there would be, in a lifetime, as many memories as there were snowflakes in a season, though what these memories were – much as what these snowflakes would look like – depended a great deal on the era, the region, the weather, of course, and the altitude and the many, maybe innumerable, larger and smaller contributing factors, such as the overall climate and topography and the chemicals and particles, be they natural or manmade, in the air.

If every memory is a bit like a snowflake and every snowflake therefore a bit like a memory, then I shall collect these snowflakes like memories and like memories they will be an artifice, in my collection, much as pictures in an album are a curated but also distorted reflection of memories, and they will be an artifice because in nature snowflakes will either solidify into ice and form layer upon layer of no longer distinguishable single delicate structures but the body of matter that is the glacier, or they will melt away with the sun, sometimes maybe having served a purpose – such as providing a surface for skiers to glide down the mountainside on – but more often not.

‘It’s really easy,’ Yanosh said after just a few minutes of such contemplative silence, during which, The Snowflake Collector noted with some delight, it had started gently snowing again outside already, ‘you just need some superglue or hairspray or something to fix them onto your glass plates; you freeze down the glass plate first so the flake doesn’t melt, then you dab or spray on the fixing agent and you put or let your snowflake settle on it: what you get in effect is an imprint of the snowflake, then you cover that with another glass plate to protect it and you’re done.’

The Snowflake Collector breathed a silent sigh of relief. He had not expected snowflake collecting to be difficult, but he knew, from many long years of experience – as he felt he’d experienced them, though they weren't that many, and they had not been any longer than any other years, except for the leap years that fell in between the ordinary ones, which had been just one day longer – that sometimes the simplest thing can turn out to be fiendishly complicated, and conversely sometimes the most daunting and difficult task can simply ebb away and turn out to be nothing more than a thing that just needed to be done. So finding, upon the reliable research carried out by Yanosh on his behalf there and then, that snowflake collecting was ‘really easy’ came, to The Snowflake Collector, as a relief, and as confirmation – though no such confirmation was needed – that he was on the right track, that he had found his calling, that the universe, at least this universe that he believed himself to be part of at this moment, was welcoming him into – perhaps even bestowing upon him – this role, and since he had already determined, as irrevocably as could reasonably, or even quite unreasonably be maintained, to be The Snowflake Collector, this meant that he and the universe were not now at odds but were in tune with each other, and for that thought alone, The Snowflake Collector felt immeasurably relieved but also grateful and calm, almost happy, though he did not, by and large, entertain any notion of, or great desire for, ‘happiness’, finding it to be so very unreliable and unsound a concept, but certainly, and this was the realisation that cheered him so greatly, at one with the universe. Had he not longed so long just for that, to be at one with the universe.

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