Overwhelmed by the Soft and the White

Snow is sticking today.  It’s the third day in a row with a morning’s falling snow.  This is the fourth day this year and it isn’t even Thanksgiving yet.  Snow blanketing Beijing can only be a good thing.  The water table inches upwards, the gristle of dust and the ochre are overwhelmed by the soft and the white.

It’s falling hard.  Only just freezing, the flakes are wet.  This makes it look as if the velocity of the snow is affected by the weight of the moisture, though I think Galileo proved that wrong.  The wind can affect the velocity.  Perhaps the temperature and the position of the cloud effects the shape of the flakes and hence their wind resistance, slowing them, spinning them.  But gravity pulls big and small equally to their fate.

It’s a weekend morning.  There is a Christmas market at the clubhouse in our compound.  Not quite Tallinn in December, but it’s pleasant to see people out selling something they themselves made, or they themselves imported because it’s their passion and not another soulless counter in our city’s mall contagion.

Sunday morning has pulled the faithful to the gym.  It’s packed.  Fortunately my stair-master spot is vacant.  But I have to wait or bow and gesture before using nearly everything else.  I use the Chinese language app Pleco while I mount the the Chrysler Building.   For years I had my own handmade flash cards dating back to my first year of Chinese study.  They are beautiful, powerful artifacts and often stimulating remembrances, but I think I’m learning more, faster with this app.  There is a “test” of five thousand character combinations.  I’m on my third time through and you can measure your progress.  I think I finished with about one seventh of the words guessed correctly last time.  This time I’m tracking just under one third.  It’s becoming addicting, as it should when you’re learning.

I keep checking, expecting the snow to have stopped.  More snow.  More snow.