Results tagged “frost snowflakes chambered nautilus art work” from Mist Net

I can't say the last day of 2007 started with any special drama, except that I went down my back steps carefully because they looked, and were, icy. (I was less wary the last time we had the same conditions, and wound up doing a flamingo's hornpipe for the amusement of the neighbors.)

So warily down the stairs I went, and when I got to terra firma I saw to my annoyance that the car windows were heavily frosted over. As usual, I was running late (breakfast was the traditional cup of coffee, hastily gulped) and this would add a devastating minute and a half or so to the leaving process. But then I stopped myself and looked a little closer.

This wasn't ordinary frost. It was, unequivocally and for the record, the most beautiful, lavish, profligate example of automotive frost I'd ever seen. Every inch of the car's windows was covered with delicately inscribed sprays, curlicues, fringed fernlike shapes, a profusion of delicate, graceful curving lines, with tiny parallel hatchmarks between them. Despite my hurry, I couldn't resist the impulse to put the briefcase in the car, get out the camera, and look the whole thing over, recording its damasked loveliness.

You may never see a car's windows frosted over quite this perfectly again, I thought. You've been late to work before, and will almost certainly be late to work again. Being late to work is not unique. But this is, I thought. It was what Keats would call "unpremeditated art," and it was worth a moment.

The moment over, I had to take this loveliness and ruthlessly destroy it. Hit the rear window defroster button, put the defroster up high, and start scraping away everywhere with a black plastic scraper. I felt bad. But my only other options were to sit and wait until it melted naturally, which might take an hour, or try to drive the car without being able to see out of it, which would result in a lot of crashing and awkward explaining, so you see my position.

There's something about frost, isn't there, when it's patterned like that? It's created only by the laws of physics, so it can't possibly be an expression of emotion, and it can't be art either. But there's something in snowflakes, or frost, or the spiral of the chambered nautilus' shell. There's a mathematical loveliness to it, and some sort of message, I've always thought. At any rate, it's possible to look at that nautilus shell or the patterns in the frost and feel a certain quiet awe. You feel that, and then you snap out of it and start the car, because you've got to get to work.