It’s 4 am and I am still awake. I went to bed early, at 12.30, but lay there reading, not tired enough to fall asleep. And now it has become 4am. I give up any attempt at sleeping and get out of bed, looking towards the window. Beyond the mostly open blinds covering the window frame, the world is filled with multiple dark shades of blue light. It’s still night and still winter dark but instead of just darkness this bluish glow lights up the view from my bedroom window. I go to it and pull up the blinds. Off to the right is the lonely streetlight shining on the path behind my building. In the glow of the lantern I can see snow falling gently within the circle of light. At such times it always brings to mind the street light in winter Narnia that the children come to after leaving their closet. It looks magical.
The path, the trees, the bushes and everything else within view is covered in a layer of sticky snow. Not deep but deep enough to cover the grass tips. There is no wind so each flake stays where it lands. Here in winter Stockholm, when snow covers the world, the darkness recedes – even without a moon, just the white snow-filled clouds covering the sky and the fallen snow covering the landscape – and turns into monochrome blue with everything visible to the eye as though it was day.
I notice a misshapen dark blob on the surface of the new, untouched white snow just to the left of the lamppost.
