Pink World

I would have liked to walk in the snow, to enjoy the tranquility that the white blanket brings to the world, even if temporarily. But I had to work. And so I appreciated very much today's train ride. There weren't many people aboard. I wonder if people were taking another snow day off their work. The train roamed through the the same landscape that was painted white. But in the beginning, as the sun was climbing its ladder up from the darkness below, its timid red rays painted the white world pink. Pink, or rose, is for optimism. Although I missed the train this morning because of schedule change of the train, I felt peaceful, sitting there in the station. And that peace found its complement in the world through which the train I later caught sped through.

The whole world was turning from light pink to white. A lot of the tracks were still under snow, revealing themselves only with the slight indentations the snow makes covering them. The usually ugly office buildings and occasional abandoned factories revealed a beauty only under this peaceful white blanket. Their big parking lots or any open space, instead of occupied by cars and machinery, were just a huge white space, and the buildings became good colorful dots contrasting the monochromatic landscape.

Then there were the cemeteries. There were at least three that I counted. They were simply a big bed of fluffy white blanket with little dots of gray and black, as if nature was giving some comfort to those already in peace. And so it was a little funny that passing one of the cemeteries, the train bellowed up a cry, as if it, along its speediness, wanted to remind the peacefulness of the contrasting role the train played in this drama that has no words.

The speedy train crosses a few rivers, all seem big because they are at their estuary points. The banks of these rivers were extended by a sheet of ice. It's not something I remember ever seeing all these years I have been taking the train. The ice itself brings some sense of solemnity, at least to me, someone who is afraid of water. It reminded me of the danger on the ice. It is very peaceful, covering up the rapid flow of the water beneath traveling like the train except to a different destination. The ice belies something very different from the peace it professes.

The snow made the world simpler. It erased many little details, and whatever is left, look so similar that you group them all together as "non-snow", and so, we have a world of snow and non-snow, black and white. And that's one path to peaceful, I think, making things simpler, stop seeking the differences in things that don't matter. For the eyes, that's soothing.

On my way to the train station, I saw a police car stuck in the snow, whirling its wheels in vain, while two colleagues in their own cars wondered about the next step. I thought about the police. I thought about law. One of my sisters is a lawyer. She told me she thought, having read some of my blog entries, that it was funny how I was so shocked about the real job world. I have never seen her world, but I can imagine many similarities between her office and mine. There's a lot of solemnity, a lot of rules. The police officers reminded me that their profession is full of rules, and they were the executors of the rules. They live with rules. In my new job is full of rules. Because in reality, the world isn't so peaceful. There are many changes, many complications. The snow hides temporarily this reality. For many of us, we don't need to worry so much about these rules. We created society, constantly trying to perfect it, partly to protect us from the reality out there. Law is about rules. Finance is about money that defines the exchange of materials without which we have no society and no protection against the changes beyond our human borders. We often exaggerate our need for rules regarding money, regarding resources, anything whose absence would take us back to the wild. It is instilled in our instincts to worry about that return to the wild, while our intelligence tries to convince us that we, at least those lucky enough to live in luxury, have come far from that cruel madness.

But I still want to see that madness. Perhaps that's why I want to see peacefulness in nature. See the snow on the Alps. See a big river flowing through the plains with animals of all sorts resting. A return to that place we have through thousands of years tried to protect ourselves from. In a few minutes I will arrive, not in the serengetis or the Swiss Alps, but in a glass building where I have to learn more rules that safeguard the money that this firm is using, much of which is drawn from the savings of people all around the world who are too timid to do something risky with it. I knew from the beginning that by learning about the rules of finance, I can understand better how complicated the world has made out of this simple foundation of society called money.