Eternal Snow – Joseph Krug
July 11, 2025
Where were you? Elizabeth was there. Raphael was there. John was there. But where were you? It’s no matter. We were there and we saw it all happen. It was a weird night. We began, in our usual way, in the park. An old Chinese man played his pipa. We gathered to listen.
Qiān shān niǎo fēi jué,
wàn jìng rén zōng miè;
Gū zhōu suō lì wēng,
dú diào hán jiāng xuě. 1
We watched the pigeons and listened to him pluck that weathered pipa. Elizabeth spoke over the music first. “I want a coffee,” John seconded. Raphael and I kept staring at the pigeons like Boy Scouts with a campfire. It’s fun to look at a thing you can’t control. “Coffee?” Elizabeth broke our focus. Raphael nodded. I objected that it might be a bit late for coffee. John pointed out that I was unemployed and, therefore, well rested. Frankly, I didn’t see the point in arguing and felt pretty defeated, so we began to walk toward Lexington from the park for coffee.
Over coffee the conversation turned to culture. Raphael asked if I had seen his friend’s movie yet. I hadn’t. “Oh, yeah. Loved it.” Raphael asked if I noticed anyone among the extras. “Were you an extra?” John grimaced a bit and told me that the cast was all female, and that it was Raphael’s girlfriend, and not Raphael, who had played the extra. “Well, you could’ve worn a wig!” Elizabeth interjected. I nodded, embarrassed. Raphael and John also conceded the point that Raphael could pass for a woman with little effort. We all stared at our coffees. Elizabeth got a text from Jen, who would show up soon. We kept talking about culture. It was uninspiring. John and Elizabeth got into a heated thing about how Edward Hopper was a hack. It wasn’t until Elizabeth made a point about palettes that John realized she was talking about the painter and not, as he had mistakenly thought, Dennis Hopper, the actor. I hadn’t thought John much of a film guy, but it turns out he was really into James Dean. Since Dean died, John decided to follow the career of anybody who was in a movie with Dean. “They were part of an order,” or so John explained, “by being in contact with his greatness. I mean, even a little guy like Sal Mineo. He was right there with him. It’s like radium, you know. Can’t shake it.” “That doesn’t make any sense,” Elizabeth said. “How could you possibly confuse Edward Hopper, who was definitely a hack by the way, with some two-bit extra.” It’s weird how Elizabeth says things like “two-bit” but we’re too afraid to correct it. We just chalk it up to a family that only had snail mail Netflix and library DVDs growing up but we never ask. John now got upset that Elizabeth had spoken negatively of an actor who was certainly developing at least some cancerous growth from Dean-poisoning as a young man.
Then Jen showed up. Jen looked sweaty, a little disheveled. She quickly explained that she had come from the Upper West Side and got lost in the Bramble. Elizabeth smiled. She told Jen to sit down and offered a napkin. Jen was kind, had kind eyes, a kind smile. She was a little dumb, but kindness covers multitudes. John was passively in love with her. He beckoned the waiter. “Menu, please!” Jen said she was fine but John insisted. She ordered an espresso and everyone but me went for another round. I was still working on my first cup of tea. Chamomile. Good stuff.
After the cups were drained and saucers surrendered, we stood on Lexington surprised that it was still light. “This time of year, you never know,” said John. We nodded. It started to snow. It was twenty-nine degrees Fahrenheit at seven thirty post meridian, and it started to snow. We started walking.
“What now?” asked Elizabeth of the gang.
John began: “The city is ours and we have no place to go. All these options, a million billion bars, any number of cool things to see, and we’re nothing if not numb. What shall we do? Where shall we—”
“There’s Phebe’s,” said Jen. It’s one of the nice parts of hanging out with a kind, dumb person is that they are quick to follow instinct and get things moving. Buridan overlooked this.
“Sounds good,” said John. All approved and we walked to the 6 and took it down to Astor. The subway ride was uneventful. Elizabeth went on a rant about one of the ads. Raphael did a crossword on his phone. We got off, we got out. Jen suggested we walk through the park. It was snowing. The park would look pretty. So off we went to the park, Raphael smoking as we walked.
As we got to the Northeast corner of the park, I noticed something odd. A group of three or four children were crowding around a trash can near the Garibaldi statue. Now, it wasn’t the kids that were strange. It was the way they stood in near perfect silence. It continued to snow. We continued to walk. The sun had set while we were on the train. The floodlights pointed at the Arch lit up each falling snowflake. The park was crowded. John said “Funny. The park’s usually empty when it’s this cold out.” “People must be coming for the snow,” said Jen. She was right. We all became part of the crowd.
I looked back toward that trash can by the Garibaldi statue. Those kids were still there, staring. It was hard to make out, but they seemed upset. I got into a kind of daze and began to walk over. John and Jen followed me. Elizabeth and Raphael sat down and smoked her Newports.
The kids began to back away from the trash can as we walked up. I wanted to see what they saw. Maybe I could help them reach something they dropped. I stood over the lid, looked inside. It was a hand in a plastic bag. “It looks like a hand in a plastic bag,” I said. I didn’t think it was real. The kids didn’t either. That’s why they just stood, wondering. John pushed me out of the way and had a look.
“Yup. Definitely a hand.”
“Do you think it’s, like, real?”
“I really don’t know.”
“A prank maybe? Or a prop?”
“Yeah, maybe it’s something from that sex shop by Papaya Dog?”
“Yeah, I guess. Lotta freaks in the Village.”
Jen had no desire to even check. She just started stroking her long dark hair. John not so subtly watched her do this. Two of the kids started to reach in for the hand. Both boys, probably 11 or 12, were just a little too short. I looked at John. “Should we pull it out?” “I don’t know,” said John. “We should find a cop,” Jen said, still pulling her hair. “Yes, let’s do that.” John was quick to go with her. They started walking toward the Arch for a cop.
So, I stood there with the kids, the trash can, and the hand. After a moment they started talking. They seemed only to speak brain rot. I’d relate their conversation but what they said was mostly unintelligible to me. I got the feeling of how the elders must have felt when Mao changed up all the Chinese. All the time, they only spoke to eachother. I think they viewed me as a piece of furniture in the park.
I didn’t really know what to think. I didn’t think, at first. I just stood there and noticed how the snow was beginning to accumulate in the trash. Then I experienced three temptations—not thoughts proper, as I didn’t direct them. I just felt them, one by one, and trembled a bit.
The first temptation was to leave behind the city and my friends and try joining the FBI.
The second temptation was to try to touch the hand.
The third temptation was to cut my own hand off. When I was a kid, I thought losing a hand was like a really cool, really common thing. This likely was due to the deleterious effects of Star Wars.
The snow continued to gather. Garibaldi statue
Hungry. One of the kids gets the hand out of the garbage as friends come back with cops. We start chasing them. Running around West Village.
One kid drops the hand. We pick it up, bring it to the cops. Have to wait an extra 20 minutes for the detective. Small talk with the cop.
Detective—-lets make him Dominican. Questions. We have few answers.
Later that night—fallling asleep listening to 1010 wins. Hear the hand story. They interviewed somebody in WSP. Asian NYU student. Scared but yeah that’s what her parents said about the city.
Radio becomes white noise—twilight thought reflections. Considerations on losing a hand. Anakin Skywalker. Hidden hand—Napoleon. Playing chess, piano. Dominant vs non dominant. Priest who made sign of the cross with left hand because he lost use of his right. Would make accessibility options make a lot more sense.
But if there’s a hand there’s probably a lot more missing. Why stop at a hand. Why not slowly chip away at all the things we take for granted more than anything else. Was the cutter surgical? Was it a gang? Do they bury you with as much of you as they can find. What if the hand is all they find? Or like a hand and a foot and a head. Do they still make you get a big coffin. I mean you want a full burial. It’s maybe just a vestige of Christian upbringing but cremation seems like a bad deal. They mess it up a lot too. Why do you even want to respect a body? Because the body, even a dead body. is a symbol of a someone. Symbols point. When we love someone, we love the things that point to them. All of it.
And even though I’m ostensively of the Far-Right, I believe in humanity. I believe in my brother, my sister. I want to love others. I want to give the greatest love to the greatest number. I am a caricature of an 1840s Russian romantic. I contain multitudes, mostly even evil multitudes. Like mobs. Mobs are an evil multitude usually. Even a flash mob—that’s a lawful evil multitude.
But, anyway, as I drifted off, dear reader—I still thought about that hand. I think about how it felt in mine between Jones Street and the cop under the arch. I still think about how still and cold and dead it was, and how it was still, despite itself, a symbol of a someone. Someone who suffered, in some way, at the very least by losing it, and probably a lot more. And as my eyes grew heavy, I was filled with a single regret—that I did not kiss that cold dead hand, to warm it but a little, and to pay some reverence to the someone behind the symbol. To light one votive candle in the eternal snow.
[1]A hundred mountains and no bird,
A thousand paths without a footprint;
A little boat, A bamboo cloak,
An old man fishing in the cold river-snow.