Any sudden end of “business as usual” ushers in possibilities for everything that is neither business nor usual. Every interruption in the “normal functioning” of government and commerce reveals glimpses of a new society that is the very negation of such sorry afflictions. Momentarily freed of the stultifying routine of “making a living,” people find themselves confronted with a rare opportunity to live. – A River’s Revenge, Chicago Surrealist Group, 1992

We took a walk before dawn. The snow had already started falling. Falling from the moon itself, perhaps. The world was a quiet pocket of calm, emptied of all people. A soft apocalypse. In the mystery of early morning, everything felt like an extension of our dreams. We walked to the center of the crossroads, amusing ourselves by drawing a pentagram in the snow with our footprints. Summoning revolution, summoning the total reinvention of everyday life. No, it is not snow which flakes down from that silvery moon. It is the great goddess Poetry herself…

In Atlanta, a minor snow collapses everything. The cars retreat to their burrows. Businesses close down, and schools all shut their doors. It is as though capitalism itself freezes. Turning finally into an white empty mannequin, into a puppet unstrung. And these snow days happen so very rarely that they barely seem real. Distant memories of a half remembered dream.

The Great Blizzard of ‘93 arrived on the morning of my 6th birthday. I like to think that my childhood self dreamed it into existence in the night – as the absolute perfect gift. I like to think it, well perhaps I did. I ran through the snow in my puffy red jacket, and with my friends, brought several great white monsters into being. Ephemeral snow golems, marvelous beasts. Childhood’s most treasured tulpas. Eventually we all came back inside, to open presents and eat cake by the fire.

The Chicago Surrealist Group once wrote the following lines about the Great Flood of ‘92:

“The majesty and fertility of the river is as irrepressible as the desire for freedom. Dreamers of the world, dream like the flood!”

Dreamers of the world, let’s dream like a snowday, too.

–

CODA
by NIMOZ

what should i call you, night
besides night
whose feathers
thick, soft, black
have turned white?

what should i call you
at sunrise
when the night turns golden?

may i call you friend
when you hold me
in the heat
and the cold
and the rain?

i hope i will die
in your arms
with the stars
looking on