Chinese snow, and a small tale.
As a preface: Not only do I [the writer] acknowledge my own existence, I have the gall to address the reader in this small morsel of prose. If this offends you, the reader in any way, I am sorry, but it is too late now. I hope you are able to reconcile by either continuing to read in defiance of your sensibilities, or by quickly forgetting me.
Have you ever noticed the smell/taste of static that rises in the sinuses when you are in close proximity to a television? There is a good chance you have not; most people are not attuned to this unique pleasure. I have about a 50/50 yes to no response lingering in my head from all the times I have asked this question in casual conversation.
Perhaps I am not describing it correctly: It is neither a taste nor a smell, but something in-between. A mouth-nose experience.
I like to make unwieldy analogies. I made one in relation to this.
When the snow falls heavy, and mutants crash from the heavens, the size of eight or nine normal flakes, I like to gather my friends and run out in the parking lots of Chinese restaurants and catch the mutants in my mouth and eat them. It doesn’t need to be a Chinese restaurant, it can be any restaurant, but if you want to do it like I do, it should be a Chinese restaurant. You can still taste that pleasing, yet somewhat foreign blend of sweet and bitter, and it makes the snow-flakes seem a little wetter than they really are, this is, of course, beside the point.
I should clarify here, I’m not punishing the mutants, I am fine with them. In fact, I would like to think that perhaps, I am doing them a favor by singling them out. The ground makes no judgment; to it, all snowflakes are equal. But I, I am a man with a discerning taste.
Anyway, I have diverged greatly from this unwieldy analogy I am making, but within reason. I want you to understand where I am coming from. You see it, I should hope. The dim, somewhat ill-seeming light from the streetlamps pouring down on the rough, stone-hewn road pocked with craters. So imperfect, it must be an act of god. The large, billowy windbreakers, which despite their ultra-thin construction are able to protect our fragile frames from the cold. The children, three in my mind, as many as you’d like in yours. They run about with their heads cocked to the sky, it makes their patterns of motion un-even, dancers devoid of elegance.
Good.
This is the other half of that analogy. In the 50’s people called TV static “snow”. I’m not sure if this is true, but my grandmother may have called it snow once. It may have been a dream, or a memory fabricated to help aide in the telling of this story, but that is beside the point as well.
So imagine that this static is snow, and some people are close enough to being children that they can catch the snow in their mouths, except that they can’t quite do it just right. It is a stretch of the imagination to believe that static is snow, and sophisticated people like you and me, are unable to maintain suspension of disbelief. So, we feign the motions. We make it about half way through, and our brain gives up, did I taste the snow, or did I smell it? And then something even worse happens. Wait, what does snow smell like? Remember how we are sophisticated? Well, sophisticated people don’t take into account frivolous things like the scent of snow. There are commoners and poets to do that for us. So we cheat. Our brain doesn’t give us a smell, it gives us a smaste, or a tell. I prefer smaste, because “tell” is already a word.
Anyway, the semantics are irrelevant. So, we have this smaste, and it is somewhat metallic, and maybe a little electric, but it is still snow. I don’t know how to connect snow and electricity in an insightful manner, but then again, neither does my brain. If it did, then the smaste of static would be more clearly defined, so I don’t think anyone will blame me for not ameliorating on the non-concrete.
So we have this thing, that might be a sensory perception, or maybe it isn’t, and it incorporates metal, and electricity and snow. And if you are playing by my rules, it also incorporates three children and some Chinese food, but if not that is okay too.
What is important here is that not everyone can have this thing. Those that can’t find this thing, this smaste, they aren’t really disadvantaged by the fact, but still, that will never have it.
In the end. I feel special being able to taste/smell static. If I ever go to a country where they don’t have winter, but they do have poor TV reception, I will find a small joy in walking near the TV and filling my head with electric Chinese metal snow.
Have you ever noticed the smell/taste of static that rises in the sinuses when you are in close proximity to a television? There is a good chance you have not; most people are not attuned to this unique pleasure. I have about a 50/50 yes to no response lingering in my head from all the times I have asked this question in casual conversation.
Perhaps I am not describing it correctly: It is neither a taste nor a smell, but something in-between. A mouth-nose experience.
I like to make unwieldy analogies. I made one in relation to this.
When the snow falls heavy, and mutants crash from the heavens, the size of eight or nine normal flakes, I like to gather my friends and run out in the parking lots of Chinese restaurants and catch the mutants in my mouth and eat them. It doesn’t need to be a Chinese restaurant, it can be any restaurant, but if you want to do it like I do, it should be a Chinese restaurant. You can still taste that pleasing, yet somewhat foreign blend of sweet and bitter, and it makes the snow-flakes seem a little wetter than they really are, this is, of course, beside the point.
I should clarify here, I’m not punishing the mutants, I am fine with them. In fact, I would like to think that perhaps, I am doing them a favor by singling them out. The ground makes no judgment; to it, all snowflakes are equal. But I, I am a man with a discerning taste.
Anyway, I have diverged greatly from this unwieldy analogy I am making, but within reason. I want you to understand where I am coming from. You see it, I should hope. The dim, somewhat ill-seeming light from the streetlamps pouring down on the rough, stone-hewn road pocked with craters. So imperfect, it must be an act of god. The large, billowy windbreakers, which despite their ultra-thin construction are able to protect our fragile frames from the cold. The children, three in my mind, as many as you’d like in yours. They run about with their heads cocked to the sky, it makes their patterns of motion un-even, dancers devoid of elegance.
Good.
This is the other half of that analogy. In the 50’s people called TV static “snow”. I’m not sure if this is true, but my grandmother may have called it snow once. It may have been a dream, or a memory fabricated to help aide in the telling of this story, but that is beside the point as well.
So imagine that this static is snow, and some people are close enough to being children that they can catch the snow in their mouths, except that they can’t quite do it just right. It is a stretch of the imagination to believe that static is snow, and sophisticated people like you and me, are unable to maintain suspension of disbelief. So, we feign the motions. We make it about half way through, and our brain gives up, did I taste the snow, or did I smell it? And then something even worse happens. Wait, what does snow smell like? Remember how we are sophisticated? Well, sophisticated people don’t take into account frivolous things like the scent of snow. There are commoners and poets to do that for us. So we cheat. Our brain doesn’t give us a smell, it gives us a smaste, or a tell. I prefer smaste, because “tell” is already a word.
Anyway, the semantics are irrelevant. So, we have this smaste, and it is somewhat metallic, and maybe a little electric, but it is still snow. I don’t know how to connect snow and electricity in an insightful manner, but then again, neither does my brain. If it did, then the smaste of static would be more clearly defined, so I don’t think anyone will blame me for not ameliorating on the non-concrete.
So we have this thing, that might be a sensory perception, or maybe it isn’t, and it incorporates metal, and electricity and snow. And if you are playing by my rules, it also incorporates three children and some Chinese food, but if not that is okay too.
What is important here is that not everyone can have this thing. Those that can’t find this thing, this smaste, they aren’t really disadvantaged by the fact, but still, that will never have it.
In the end. I feel special being able to taste/smell static. If I ever go to a country where they don’t have winter, but they do have poor TV reception, I will find a small joy in walking near the TV and filling my head with electric Chinese metal snow.