Weekender Wanderer 2

 With or without Covid, winter is an ordeal. Gone are the days when you can just step outside into inviting warm weather, the sun, and just go for a walk. Everything's much more oppressive. You can feel the distance from the sun increase because the light is slightly paler, colder. Going out for a walk takes more effort because of the weather. The days are shorter yet ironically time itself stretches into darkness. You are more alone with yourself, I feel. Perhaps that is the consequence, or the cost, of living rurally. The flip side of blossoms and summer bloom. There is always this yin and yang in the world, seeking to understand is the journey, perhaps even the purpose, of a lifetime.

I seek to find meaning in this. I work to align myself with how the world changes through these seasons. This is what I consider to be spirituality. The attunement of self with world. Perhaps a merging of sorts; a sublimation of ego into eternity. The endless movement of life. The heartbeat that never stops.

All that is before the presence of the pandemic. In so many ways winter will be different this year, but in so many ways it will be the same, perhaps made even more intense. For example, I will be very surprised if there isn't trick or treating in a couple of weeks. I will be very surprised if the shops aren't packed over the festive period - even though certain things will be different, or gone. There will be no Christmas markets in Bristol for example. Frankly that's not too bad, although if that's your livelihood then it quite literally will be too bad. For me, I think they busy up the streets making the city centre a horrible overly busy sensory overload. I'm always relieved when that period is over. Well now it's over before it starts. But the shops are certainly going to want to sell as much as possible, as they normally do.

More importantly people are going to want to buy things.

Will there be a lockdown before hand? Maybe that would help. Lockdown for a month and then maybe mad consumerism can return, briefly, before lockdown is necessary again. That's the new cycle of life it seems. The new spirituality. Not really ideal.

Someone floated the idea that we should lockdown during the school holidays, such as the upcoming half term. Use that as an opportunity to 'break the circuit'. It makes a kind of sense, there's something reasonable about it. Of course it won't happen. The longer the stupid government takes, dithering, to decide how to react to this second wave, the longer that wave will be.