SNOWFLAKES AND THOUGHTS

"SNOWFLAKES" oil,
by Gerald Schwartz

On any given day, my thoughts are usually as gauzy and scattered as the dusting of snow across Mystic this morning, and that’s exactly what I love most about them. I feel fortunate that, instead of thinking heavy thoughts, the kind that create unwanted weight and worries, my thoughts are usually as insubstantial as the snowflakes that floated down on us last night. Even the occasional disquieting ones seem to easily scatter through my mind, and then just as easily disappear, as will this wispy sheet of snow by this afternoon. My thoughts are, by and large, lightweight and light-hearted notions that fling themselves around in fairly disorderly ways. It’s like they’re having fun, these sometimes bothersome but always free-spirited thoughts that dance around inside me, and I often have fun observing them in their escapades. Like snowflakes, they sooner or later come to a stop -- sometimes, quite miraculously, in curious rows on a computer screen called sentences.