Midafternoon, Early November
It is midafternoon and for the first time this year, it is snowing. I am listening to “Famous Blue Raincoat” by Leonard Cohen and looking out the window from my bedroom desk, which faces in towards the condo parking lot and entrance. It is not four in the morning, nor is it the end of December; but with the snow falling like wet lace clippings, it feels as though the song is one with the moment, the way music is part of the essence of a movie scene. In fact, it feels almost as though Leonard Cohen is singing for me, for the very purpose of my present scenery of being – he could even be, at this moment, playing guitar on my bed and writing a letter, as I sit at my desk watching the fat snowflakes descend to a new wintry ground. (That early winter ground of wet dying grass and sopping, slippery asphalt, which is not yet cold enough to cradle and preserve such icy forms.) I am now feeling very much as though my life itself might be a Leonard Cohen song, which is why I perceive his music to be written for me when, in fact, my own life is an echo of all sad and purple Leonard Cohen songs that create the nostalgic aural realm within which my existence unfolds. Staring out the window, I get a sense that this act of watching the first snowfall of November is a song; or rather, it is a particular series of notes within the unfolding fugue that is my present life. Now I can no longer determine if the lived life is more like a series of unfolding symphonies, written as they are performed – or, my beloved metaphor of life as a series of novels, written in the memory and in the decisions we choose to make as reckless yet committed writers. Maybe my life is actually an album of violet echoes of Leonard Cohen songs that I write whenever I withdraw into conscious reflection. The dark melody and deep words are soothing, hovering nebulously around the soul’s ear. This song in particular is a favorite: the voice falls dewy upon a wandering consciousness. Words, like blind snowflakes, fall away from me silently, at a distance; and I am warm, motionless. My mind returns to absorb the image of cars driving slowly on the wet street beyond the entrance. Then suddenly “Famous Blue Raincoat” has stopped: the room is a fragile quiet, as I continue to stare out the window, left only with the music of my thoughts.
MM
