As
I prepare a hearty winter soup and forage in my freezer
for iron-rich meat products, I stop and go "Oh. ‘Tis
the season." I look at the horrible world of snowy
yuck outside and the snoogly deliciousness of my bed and
wriggle my toes in my fluffy socks.
Yup.
Time
to hibernate.
I’ve
started growing my extra layer of winter fur (actually,
it’s an all-year-round layer, it’s just that in
the winter there’s no point to shaving because no member
of the general sniffy public will see my naked legs), and
I have been wearing plaid pajama pants to work in an attempt
to pretend it’s all a too-many-nuts-before-naptime
dream. The surrealness of events helps with this: I keep
forgetting what day it is; I got one too many psychic guesses
right this week; the bank sent me cheques with my name spelled
wrong for the THIRD time; oh yeah, and Stephen Harper. Surreal.
Because
really, it’s not natural to be dealing with outside
when it’s this unpleasant. We should be walled into
our well-insulated dwellings with enough fat, protein and
dried vegetables to last the winter (and also a still).
Wrapped in furs, we should tell stories, sing songs, light
little oil lamps, eat meat products cooked in fat and wrapped
in bread until there’s a good, strong sign that the
sun is here to stay.
Imagine
it: no more awful mornings of going to work in the dark,
feeling like you are dragging your body behind you like
a corpse. No more numb fingers and toes as the third completely
packed streetcar grumbles past you, sending up a fine spray
of ice and cinders to soak your jacket. No more pretending
to have fun at restaurants where you lose another 5 degrees
of body heat every time someone leaves (or breathes, in
some especially bad cases). Just you, your honey(s), a crate
of DVDs and all the mashed potatoes you can handle.
Christmas
is a poor imitation of this ancient pagan behaviour. Shopping,
even underground, is not a form of hibernation, sorry. Not
even sale shopping. And one day of snoozing in an armchair
from turkey overdose does not a wintering-in make. I say
we should get back to our roots, or our caves, and get furry.
Nothing good ever happens during the winter, however hard
we try to jolly ourselves along by decking the halls and
skating on canals. It’s a season of miserable death
for the vulnerable, dangerous conditions for travellers
and skyrocketing fuel costs for billpayers. Life should
be reduced to its simplest forms, thus demanding less movement
and less artificial heat: eat, sleep, snuggle, occasionally
read a comic, scratch, eat some more. No laundry, no cleaning,
just long snoozes and long conversations.
Now
we have the phone, the internet and TV, there’s no
need to leave the house even to forage for basic provisions
(OK, that relies on you being able to afford all three,
and then delivery, and it relies on other people leaving
the house to do the deliveries and maintain the systems,
which is a flaw in the democratic nature of my plan) such
as food and long chats about nothing. Stock up the fridge
and you could hide out a good long time from the bad cold
world.
It
doesn’t do bears any harm, does it? And bears are cool.
You don’t mess with a bear, so make like one and take
this season off.
he