Book Ende

I have a poster hanging on my bedroom wall of the Eiffel Tower covered in snow, the entire surrounding area obscured by cold, winter fog. There is a thick layer of freshly fallen, undisturbed powder on each branch of the trees lining the walkway to the tower. There are no footprints, no people, no noise...

The rest of the world is still asleep.


I got this poster in college at a dorm poster sale. It was mixed in a bin with pictures of album covers and boy bands. I rescued it. I bought it along with a poster of photographs of Monet's gardens which now hangs opposite of it over the corner affectionately referred to as my "reading corner."

I bought the Eiffel Tower poster without hardly a second glance because my 18 year old self wanted to look artsy and French and what better way to do that than to hang a picture of the Eiffel Tower in your room like some "good omen." But every time I looked at it, I didn't see the tower, I saw the lamp in the foreground of the right hand side.

It is tall, black, iron, standing there bold and unaffected by the fog surrounding the rest of the landscape. It has several rings near the bottom serving as shelves for the flakes to rest on as they make their way to ground and it is capped with a perfectly round pile of snow that looks like it fell there intentionally, to keep the lamp warm. The lamp stands as one of hundreds lighting the way in all their extraordinary ordinariness to the iconic tower in the background.