Threat Level White
Snow Can Be Pretty. And Too Much Snow Can Be Pretty Creepy.

By DeNeen L. Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, February 13, 2006

Like a cloak of insanity, the snow dropped.

Falling like one of those quiet obsessions you read about in short stories, setting the scene for heightened senses, muffling normal sounds. Falling like snow on a black-and-white TV. Like madness. Like when one of those Edgar Allan Poe characters falls into a spell so deep he can focus on only one thing, see only one thing, hear only one thing.

The snow seemed to do the same to this city, spreading inexplicable sounds and images, coating it in a spooking kind of silence, except for that clap of thunder sometime right before midnight Saturday. Did you hear that? And in the morning you swear you hear a child laughing somewhere, somewhere outside. But it is 5 a.m. Zip, the blinds tear from the window. You hear the laughter still, a creepy kind of child's laughter like in "The Bad Seed," but you cannot find the child.

Then you notice the blazing whiteness, a fluorescent kind of white that pierces each room, with the kind of brightness that you would expect on a summer day, except there is no summer. The kind of blazing light like when the old movie is over and all that is left on the screen is the white projector light, but your eyes have adjusted to darkness and are not ready for the light.

Then the electricity goes out. A beep downstairs. The shrill ring of a phone and some robotic voice telling you the caller is unidentified . You must get out of the house. But first you must find the snow boots you put away when it was so mild in January that people were wearing shorts. Who would expect another crazy snowfall when crocuses had already started blooming and a redbird was spotted in the back yard?

You descend into the now-dark, now-scary basement looking for the boots. The iridescent light from the snow cannot reach down here. You fly back up the stairs. Try to act like an adult. Think. Find the camping light, then descend into the darkness again. You find the boots, but where is the snow shovel? Probably in the garage where raccoons are known to lurk. You forgo the shovel.

In the thesaurus, snow is listed on the page with the heading "Sniper-Soar." Under Snow, some of the words listed are refrigerator, drug, poison, words that some people mean when they say snow. Under snowflake is written: softness, powder, white thing. You stop at white thing. It sounds creepy.

Outside, the snow has covered up everything that was ugly. Like a white blanket on falsehoods, negation, duplicity, impostors and meekness.

It is not yet afternoon, and Surabhi Dabir is "grumpy" because she could not find her boots. There she stands in her husband's black boots, dragging the kids to a snow hill. "I would like it more if I were color-coordinated in pink," she says.

Just then her son Anand, 4, screams one of those inexplicable screams that 4-year-old children tend to scream. The same kind of scream the inner child would like to let go when things are not perfect. His brother, Arjun, 7, has just kicked snow into his sled. His father, Jeremy Blum, a research scientist, is trying to explain that snow is meant to go inside sleds. But Anand doesn't buy the premise, and wipes the snow out.

In the same parking lot, there is Randy Cohen, 43, of Takoma Park, who says last night he noticed the full moon. Just then his wife, Ginny Cohen, begins reciting poetry: "The moon over the breast of the new fallen snow gave the luster of midday to objects below." She adds: "Even though there was no moon last night."

"There was a moon," counters Randy. "It lit up the clouds and the clouds lit up the snow and it was lovely last night."

This poetry moment in the parking lot is broken by a scream: "Come on, people!" yells their child Arthur, 8, standing next to his 10-year-old sister, Mattie. "Let's go!"

On down 13th Street NW, Kevin Zepeda, 17, and Julian Andrade, 18, scoop snow off an old gray Chevy truck that is missing a back window. They are hurling snowballs across the black street, cleared of snow. High arcs aimed at the window like in those movies when a suitor tries to wake a sleeping beauty or monster. They are trying to wake their friend. And they are talking about the snow. "It looks white. For real," Zepeda says.

"For real," says Andrade.

"It sounds quiet," Zepeda says. "Maybe because everybody is still sleeping."

"Ain't ev erybody sleeping."

Suddenly the images frozen under snow in the city seem to move. Did you see that? That stone bell tower, like the kind you would see in Europe, but you never noticed it before in D.C. -- you could have sworn it just swayed. You look over your shoulder, but ain't nobody else standing there to agree with you.

Or did the tower just seem to move because the clouds moving behind the tower are moving, traveling east like they are trying to cross the street, moving in the same direction as the man with the shovel and the broom on his shoulder out here in the snow just trying to make some money.

And you notice the snow on vines growing over steel bars and white garbage bags full of salt and you see a man flick white snow off his black Afro and you hear the Bee Gees' "Night Fever" blasting from a car: "Sweet city woman, she moves through the light, controlling my mind and my soul."

And you see a little girl in a teal coat carrying a snowball on top of her head, big as a melon. The girl is swaying the same way women in Haiti sway when they carry loads on their heads.

And you see a man walking in loafers. He is talking on a cell phone and he slips as he turns the corner. He almost falls, but then the sidewalk holds him up and he looks around to see if anyone saw him. Too cool for snow boots and too cool to fall and he doesn't break his stride and the cell phone never leaves his ear.

You see a church that looks like it's closed. Nobody has swept the steps. The sign says morning worship starts at 11 a.m., and it is 20 minutes after that. But you see only one set of footprints leading in and none coming out.

In Logan Circle, you see a little dog in a pink sweater, and you wonder why the sweater -- and more so, why pink. And you see a man snapping photos and you swear you could hear the camera's shutter a block away.

And then the ear picks up on a conversation. "Every time I go over there, I give you a high-five and a brother-man handshake and all you do is preach," a man in a black stocking cap is telling a man who is dragging behind him a red suitcase. "I drink alcohol and I'm going to go on drinking alcohol, and I'm going this way."

And the man with the red suitcase splits company. He steps into the street to wait for the light. But a motorist honks at him and the man with the red suitcase swears and gestures at the snow. "Man, this is [expletive] snow. Can't you see that? I can't stand on the sidewalk. Are you [expletive] crazy?"

As a matter of fact . . .