The Winter War

Saint Augustine claimed that evil is just the lack of good. How else could we describe nature, the bottomless pit of the universe, the deserts of Saturn, the solar tempests, the carelessness of the weather? Humans, insects, birds, grass, fish, all living creatures are together in the struggle against evil. They are the rebels, doomed to a perennial fight. They are the resistance, because they are alive.

 

In medieval times, all wars stopped with the arrival of the winter winds. Before the imperialism of centrally heated offices, people used to be subjected to the evilness of nature more than to that of their fellow men. In that horrifically wise age, humans like us used to relegate the vanity of war to times of luxury, when the loss of one’s life or freedom could at least have been mitigated by the gentle warmth of the evening and the abundance of raspberries even at the edge of a serf’s field.

Now war expands to the darkest hours of January, when not even leaves dare to unfurl. War: the capital double-u like the cross of martyrdom of Saint Andrew, the final ‘ar’ like a scream softened by agony. Ages pass, martyrdoms take different names. So, it is Work today. The same cross, hiding the final sound of an Ogre, inhumanely muscular, insatiably hungry. On that cross the monster hangs his prey, cures them, lets them dry. And as their skin hardens like the leather of an executive chair, as their neurons take the square shape of silicon, he finally sinks his teeth into their flesh.

I propose to follow the wisdom of the ancient warlords and their bands of armed peasants. Let us stop Work as the winter approaches. The lustful anchors of sleep that keep us in bed at the sound of our alarms are the last shades of life hiding under the frozen crust of an employee’s life. What fools we are to ignore their subtle warning, the messages of sleeping foxes in the patches of sun, the threats of dark clouds. We shall declare the North the bed of the world, where our life shall be spent in a perennial dream.

Capitalism is a dream, too, but far too tiring for our fragile bodies. Better is the caress of whiskey on a soft mattress, as it tells us to wait, to wait for the longer days, when all the monkeys like us will awake to war.

Governments shall declare the months from November to March as seasonal retirements for all people, paid for by the summer frenzy. Strolls in the cold shall not be mixed with the freezing sweat of rushing for a commuter train, the warmth of one’s breath shall not breed with the stable’s atmosphere of the tube.

We shall learn the art of striking from our fellow creatures, as they withdraw from the murderous cycles of nature. Only snow leopards, arctic foxes and employees share the idiotic desire to camouflage themselves with the white death of the sunless season.

If we do not spend the winter dreaming, what dreams are we to realize on the burning stage of summer?

Abolishing work simply means to withdraw the ungrounded trust we put in our ability to fight the carelessness of nature. Everything is nature, except living things! Icy fogs tighten our throats, as the frozen soil strangles the roots of a tree. November rains cover us like the shipwreck flood that drowns sailing mice. With our fellow victims, we share the struggle for a ray of tepid light, in the abyss of a forgetful universe, in which no trace of us is ever left but the mark of joy of one’s present.

Winter is the dress rehearsal of the afterlife. We ghost on through it, palely undead, denying our destiny. We shall learn from it the objectiveness of atheism and the urgency of liberation. Let us practice dreaming in our counted seasons, so that we will meet our final winter fully ready. Able, may be, to dream forever. Of us shall remain only what we are.