The Botanical Gardens in Prague are one of the best places I know to spend a hangover or two.
The snow, having spent the night piling up smoothly on every tree, bush and shrub, now seems content to swirl aimlessly about. I stand numb outside the hothouse, letting the gentle flurry meld with the white ground. Any more mellow than this would be catatonic.

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I catch a few snowflakes on the tip of my glove. You can see the crystal branching and unfolding deep down like a documentary on fractals and you can’t help think that for a beautiful and unique snowflake, it looks pretty much like any other goddamn snowflake. Can’t it be a circle, for once? Or a little emblem that symbolizes a snowflake? Maybe a trimmed down, no-nonsense icon of a snowflake? Must it always be endlessly complex and individual? Dare to be different!

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I watch the flake resting on my woolen fingertips. I only have to my my finger a bit closer to it for it to shrivel and die. Body heat, friction – whatever. At first it just shrinks, the edges falling off but still remaining an endlessly-complex little bastard. Then another second and it’s gone. Not even a drop of water. Nothing left.
My moisture-starved brain-cells are grabbing desperately at any excuse to wax poetic. “It’s an allegory! It’s a metaphor for how fleeting our lives are!”.
And it is, of course. It’s an island of anti-entropic structure that vanishes without a trace due to the actions of impartial, uncaring forces. Snowflakes are such sell-outs. “Oooh, look at me. I’m frail and fleeting and existentialistic”. Why don’t they just open up a little stall with commemorative plates and Roy Batty t-shirts and get it over with?

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Commercial forces are threatening my tranquility. I take some pictures and go back into the hothouse.

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