The 2019 solstice is possibly a rite of passage, and possibly the end of days. The 21st and the 14th (UK election day) have merged in the imagination, just as rites of Christmas and the solstice are really one and the same.
.
The child of Spring may be born, or not. Humanity’s pillage of nature is on that same, sharp fulcrum of time. It is the end of days, or it is rapid abandonment of much that we’ve thought normal – the family car, super markets, cheap food, aviation, suburbia, internet shopping, enclosed monopolies… If we emerge and the leaves return, then it must be to a society, in which “both work and pleasure are walking distance from everyone’s door” – the theme of this book. Everyone must have a door and a fitting, contributory part in the whole.
.
This Winter is deep as it gets – the very depth of what it means to be human – personal intrinsic and filial morality, or not. Sing (and feel) holy, holy, holy, or wearily reach for the remote control.
.
On the fulcrum there is a hushed timelessness – we are just human – the species embodied in ourselves. In the dawn we’ll have re-entered time and consequence. Will jackboots have invaded the Reichstag again? Will we be focused on climate targets, as soil vanishes beneath our feet? Will lovely and ancient carols (dancing songs) be silenced by techno-beat?
.
Have we decided on the extinction of our own species? That choice is not collective, it is personal.