Hmmm, how can we pull together the loose threads in the face of another lockdown?
It has been difficult to get into the Christmas spirit this year. The November weather has been unusually mild some days. But that is not really the problem. The cold weather and the snowstorms will come in time. That much is a certainty.
Things just seem to be out of rhythm this year for obvious reasons. We feel stuck in time as if the battery ran down on the clock of life and no one can find a replacement battery. It is on back order from the factory but no one can tell us when it will arrive.
This is an illusion, of course. Time is marching on as relentlessly as ever. But the machine of everyday life has been taken offline – particularly here in Peel Region where we have been put on notice that we are going into lockdown again as of Monday.
One weekend to enjoy our limited freedom before the locks go on the doors again.
As I write this post, the Johnny Depp version of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is playing on television. The golden ticket winners and their parents have entered the chocolate factory and left the outside world behind. It is a strange, make-believe world where the rules are different and no one is allowed inside except by invitation.
Sound eerily familiar? So often fiction imitates life, or in this instance, foreshadows it. We are searching for a Willy Wonka who holds the carefully guarded key to the door.
By the way, the annoying little girl with the adult sized ego has just chewed a stick of Willy’s experimental gum against his advice and swollen up to the size of a 400 pound blueberry. There is a metaphor in there somewhere, but I do not have time to unravel it. The Oompa-Loompas have broken into a song and dance routine again.
Sorry for wondering off topic. The truth is I am not really sure where this post is going. More and more, in these unsettling times, I find that I have to surrender to the creative flow and trust where it takes me. Instinct is more useful than reason in the current circumstances.
Let me try and tie the loose threads of this post together.
Christmas is just over a month away. The spirit of the season has not yet taken hold because we are struggling to find our way through a frustrating time where the rules keep changing, our lives are squeezed into small spaces and the clock of life is stalled.
So what to do? Pause, take a breath and channel Willy Wonka who sees the world through his own lens. Christmas will come and the true meaning of it will shine through. No pandemic or lockdown can stop that from happening.
We may be waiting for the new battery for the clock for some time yet. But that does not mean that life is at a standstill.
Keep the faith and keep moving forward. This too shall pass.
~ Now Available Online from Amazon, Chapters Indigo or Barnes & Noble: Hunting Muskie, Rites of Passage – Stories by Michael Robert Dyet
~ Michael Robert Dyet is also the author of Until the Deep Water Stills – An Internet-enhanced Novel which was a double winner in the Reader Views Literary Awards 2009. Visit Michael’s website at www.mdyetmetaphor.com .
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Tags: COVID-19 · lockdown · metaphor · Michael Robert Dyet · pandemic · Willy Wonka and the Chocolate FactoryNo Comments