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We finally had some snow yesterday. This winter has been unusually warm and I almost gave up on the hope of seeing the snow. I love the purity of the landscape in the backdrop of snowy winter day. Everything is reduced to the simple purity of whiteness. All my busy thoughts vanish when I look at the snow. Snowflakes magically melt away all my memories, all my emotions, and all my expectations. I am happily diagnosed with short-term memory loss on a snowy day like this. I am granted a day of peace, a day of rest, a day of no torture from memories, thoughts, boggling emotions. It’s a day of grace.

And today, it’s like I had a short dream of a magical snowy day yesterday. It’s sunny out there, quickly reaching sixty degree weather. Memories I lost thanks to the snow yesterday were quickly charging back at me. As if to run away from the fast approaching beating, like a battered wife running away from her husband, I drove to my mom’s apartment after a swim class. It’s too sunny out there. Too clear and bright. I remember too much.

I sit here in my old room. When I moved in with my parents after I shut down my business, I set up my simple writing space in this room with only a table, chair, and a bed. My small possessions of books and clothes were tucked away in the small closet. I didn’t have much to fit into this room, but still, I had too many things for my easily distracted mind and I longed for openness, empty spaciousness. I longed for something like my Hawaii studio when I lived alone. My empty studio had only a small table and a chair for me to write on. I happily slept on the floor every night right next to my yoga mat which was always spread on the same spot. Every dawn, I would roll over to my yoga mat and start my yoga practice in my pajamas. I miss those simple, pure days.

This old room of mine is now resembling my empty Hawaii studio. My parents are in transition to move to the country house. After all the furniture has been moved, this condo is baring its nakedness with no make-up, just the way it was when we first came to look at it with our realtor. The room is all white walls and creamy light brown carpet with no furniture and no clutters. It’s like this room got snowed in and everything vanished under the blanket of snow. As I sit here in silence, I sense my mind clearing up fast. My complex emotions are quickly replaced with simple joy of being. I focus on my breathing -in an empty room like this, what else can you focus on?- which gently brings me to an inner place of full awareness. I am aware that this being alive carries with it many ups and downs. It comes with unpredictability of all sorts. But all things are passing away except the landscape of my soul that is fully at rest in God’s heart womb. This landscape is ever the same. Nothing else matters in this life. No events in life are important except for the events of the soul.

Snow is a big event for my soul.

Sitting in an empty room makes my soul the life of the party.

This emptying of the space is the emergence of the real.