All we wanted was it All - strawberries in Winter, to be forever young, to never know Cold.
Freedom from the constraints of nature, of our ancestors, of time... even as we reveled in their riches.
Maybe we did not know the nature of what we wanted.
Any other time of year, these past few balmy December days would have been deemed beautiful, perfect. Why is it anything less than that now?
Because it isn't following the rules?
Because it is Unusual, Unfamiliar?
Because, maybe it is becoming too familiar?
How fiercely we cling to traditions honoring these ancient relationships - between seasons and harvests, stories of survival and familial warmth, of resilience in the fine articulations of soul and flesh that carved pathways through dark times, cold times to here and now - but we have long since moved beyond those relationships' ability to regulate our lives. Tradition feeds economic structures now, instead of our hungry hearts; motions we blindly repeat instead of things that inspire us to act.
What will Winter mean when it is a story we tell our children?
When our children's children live in a world of eternal warmth, will a creeping coolness strike fear into their hearts because it is too Unfamiliar?
Instead of the inward turning, Loss-of-our-Leaves, Death of Identity that Winter asks of us, perhaps we are now required to live inside the identity we've crafted for ourselves. Have we not clamored for most of our history to find our way back at the Gates of the Garden? - for Eden too is eternally warm, where everything fruits out of season, a place where time does not pass and we never age. A place where our only responsibility is to not question Authority.
How desperately we have toiled as the Human Race, to replace the Laws of Nature with technologies to Manifest our every Desire. Closer and closer it comes, out of our own mythologies, to walk amongst us.
Why then does it strike us with fear?
