Clawing Winter

Clawing Winter

It's so cold. So incredibly cold. But not in an energizing, purifying way. Not in a way that's natural. Not in a way that's right and belonging, despite this being winter. No, it's colder than winter ever is. It's colder than winter ever has been before. It's a dead cold, a dread cold, a cold that is wrong, so wrong, and intense, so intense. It is heavy and seeps into your skin, your muscles, all the way to your bones. It sinks down all the way into your bones and turns your bones to ice. The cold is scratching at you, at your flesh, your blood, your skin, your bones, with sharp and serrated claws. It's ripping apart everything inside of you.

I am at the bus stop. I am outside, waiting for the bus. All around me, there is the downtown of the city. Large buildings made of metal and glass. Large glass shop windows and cafe windows and food store windows all lining the streets, the people inside the buildings looking out onto the streets with cold, cold eyes. I'm not dressed for the weather. Of course I'm not dressed for the weather. Good winter clothes are expensive and it's not as if I have enough money. I need to pay rent. I need to pay for food. I need to pay for transportation to get to work. The list goes on.

I work. I work and I make enough money to get by. I earn enough money to get by. And I should be proud of myself. I absolutely should be proud of myself. That I'm contributing to society and I'm contributing to my nation and I am helping move the wheels of economy and industry along. I work hard and I earn my keep, as any good citizen should. And I've always been told that this is what the goal of life is, this is what the purpose of being on this earth is.

I can't help but feel so small and weak and insignificant though. I can't help but feel so small and weak and insignificant right now. With the cold beating down on me and me standing here, shivering, in absolute agony. Waiting for a bus that isn't due to come for another five minutes. Not able to support myself enough to guard against this horrific weather. I am so small right now, here in the punishing cold of the city, and everything I did in my life wasn't enough to save me from this.

I look around the city as I wait for the bus, just to give myself something to do. Not that I can take in or absorb or appreciate or enjoy the beauty of the architecture around me. I can't take in any of it, I can just be aware of it, since I am in so much pain right now. Please let this end. Please let this end. Please let the bus come soon. Please let this end.

A group of homeless people is walking by. Two men and two women. They look to be in their forties, though I'm not sure. I can tell that they're homeless from their clothes, which are worn and tattered and ill-fitting. And I can also tell from their eyes. Their eyes are ... their eyes are haunting. Their eyes are haunted. Their eyes are harrowing. Their eyes are harrowed. There is such a deep, all-saturated, harsh sort of agony in their eyes, eyes that contain a vastness the likes of which no human could understand. There is such a deep, aching, all-consuming pain. And there is a weakness, a helplessness that is so hopeless and miserable. And there is a strength that comes from being forced to endure, being forced to endure, being forced to endure no matter how much you don't want to.

I don't know how I know this. I don't know how I know this. I don't know how I know this, and yet I know it in the base of my being, at the root of my soul. These eyes, these four pairs of eyes, they have crashed into me and conquered me and I cannot, I cannot deny what I see in them. I cannot deny this knowledge that is almost tangible, that is both beautiful and horrible at the same time. I've ... I don't know if I have ever felt something like this before.

I stare at the group of homeless people as they walk by, their bodies unprotected and weary. They look into the windows of the buildings around us, with a hopeless and murdered sort of longing. They look into the windows, at the people and stores inside the windows, with a sort of sorrow and perturbation that reaches so deep, so deep, that sends its roots out throughout the entire world, that sends its roots down to the very depths of me.

I keep looking, and one of the two men turns to look at me. In his eyes is a sort of desperation, a sort of pleading that I cannot hold myself strong against. In his eyes there is a deep sort of anger, an anger that has nowhere to go, that has no power to do anything. And it hits me square in the throat and slices into me in ways that I cannot describe or even comprehend, that I can only feel the indelibility of.

The bus comes, and I have to get on. I have to go to work. I have to pay my rent. The bus comes, and I step onto it, and I am swept away from these people, I am swept away from this place, I am swept away from the eyes that are looking at me with such intensity and such enormity. And yet it is as though I am still there. The scene plays out in my mind again and again and again, and all the emotions associated stay with me, stay solid and present and immediate, as if they will never leave the forefront of my mind.

The bus is warm. The seats are hard. The floor is dirty. The poles are old and have paint chipped away to reveal the metal underneath. But the bus is warm. And it grants me shelter from the horrible cold outside. A cold the likes of which I have never experienced before. I was out there for many minutes, but I am inside now. I am in a heated vehicle now. And I can warm up. My journey through this winter is over for the next twenty minutes.

The homeless people I just met though, they don't have any solace from the cold, harsh winter. They don't have any shelter from the cold. I am on the bus now. And I will go to work after that. And then I will go home. The homeless people cannot go back into the homeless shelter until nine at night, and they get kicked out at eight in the morning. It's not the shelter's fault, the organization doesn't have the money to pay for heating during the day. But it still means that the homeless people have to be outside for hours and hours each day, only getting to go inside when the shelter opens for brief meal times and when a business lets them use the washroom for a few minutes. The longest I have to stay outside is ten minutes. The people who I have just seen have to stay outside for hours.

Their clothes are worse than my clothes too. They're layered, they definitely are layered, but they're old and worn. They are not made for the incredible cold. All they could wear is what other people didn't want anymore.

It must be horrific, it must be horrific, it must be so horrific having to stay in this winter. It must be absolutely agonizing. Pain in your body. Pain in your mind. Pain in your heart. Pain in your soul. This winter is like no other winter. This is a winter like none of the winters that have come before it. And this is a winter where the city is harsher, sharper, more cutting and biting and stinging than it usually is.

I wonder why it's so cold this year.

I keep thinking about the people I saw until it's time for me to get off the bus and walk to my work. I am worried that I won't be able to concentrate on my work, that I won't be able to do well at my job. If I can't do well, I will get fired. And if I get fired, I won't be able to pay rent. And if I'm not able to pay rent, I will end up homeless as well, just like them. Though I wonder, maybe that's not such a bad thing. Maybe it's right for me to suffer the way so many other fellow human beings are suffering.

I walk through the snowy ground of the empty parking lot and into the large dark blue structure that is the weapons factory I work at. I go through the glass doors and again, again I am warm. But I have to work now.

I work at a weapons manufacturing plant that gives weapons to the army, navy, and air force of our country. Our country is a very great and powerful country. We have the best military in the world. We have the most soldiers, the best technology. And we use our great military to protect the whole world from violent rebels and threats. We send our soldiers out all over the world, we give weapons to our allies, and we deal with any rebel groups that threaten the security of the world.

But there are many people who think that what we're doing is bad. They're the political activist types. They're the contrarian types. They want to rebel against the norm and the way things are done. And they want to fight the power. That's why they shouldn't be believed. They say that they're only telling the truth of what's happening in the world. But I don't believe them.

They claim that the military is killing civilians and destroying schools and hospitals and water treatment facilities and other things. They say that the military kills people, kills children, destroys important infrastructure, destroys and devastates other countries. Destroys and devastates the people in other countries.

But I don't believe that. I think the military is protecting us and protecting the world. And the weapons I am building are being put to good use.

And yet, at this moment there is something, something in my mind that doubts that. Is our country really as great as I thought it was? Is my country truly the best in the world?

I try to ignore these doubts. I have to ignore these doubts. I have to keep working. Because no matter what, I have to be a good worker. Or else I will be stranded on my own in this harsh city.

It's a lot of work, making weapons. It's a lot of physical exertion, and a lot of mental skill as well. I have to lug heavy, cumbersome components through the factory and then place them exactly where they need to be in the weapon that's in the process of being built. Then I have to put all the smaller pieces into place around the heavy parts, making sure everything is exactly where it needs to be, which requires a good understanding of the schematics and careful concentration. Then I have to lug in more heavy parts and the process continues going.

It's demanding, definitely, but it's not traumatizing. It takes a lot of strength but not more strength than I can give in a healthy and humane way. It takes a lot of energy but not so much energy that I end up weary. It takes concentration but not so much concentration that my mind hurts. It's okay, my work is okay, it doesn't hurt me, it's not too much. But I do definitely feel like it's teetering on the edge of hurting me, it's teetering on the edge of being too much.

I am making bombs right now. You would think that bombs are small things, like cannon balls. But no, they are huge. Slightly bigger than a pickup truck. There are so many components that go into the bomb. Layer after layer of different things fitting just into place. I don't always make bombs, but that's what I'm doing today.

I think about what the bombs must be used for. I'm not entirely sure. The activists say that the bombs are used against civilians. That these huge, hulking beasts are dropped from planes onto the neighbourhoods of other countries, falling onto the small huts of foreign families, reducing them to rubble and reducing the people to bloody messes. I don't believe that. I don't believe these are used against anything that's not a military target.

But still.

Part of me doubts.

After many hours, I am done my work, and I am tired, and I am ready to go home and rest. I feel satisfied, having worked hard all day. I feel satisfied, but also tired, and there is something within me that is darkened and afraid. There is something inside me that is not satisfied, that is sorrowful,

I go across the snow-covered parking lot to the bus stop. It's really snowing hard today. The cold of the winter bites into me with its sharp, jagged teeth like the serrated blades of a powerful saw. It bites into me and it leaves my bones cracked apart, and it hurts. It hurts and the ten minutes I have to spend waiting here feel like ten eternities of cruel violence. And yet somehow I'm not as relieved as I expected to be when the bus does come.

I make my way to the back of the bus and sit down. There's a girl sitting across from me. She looks young, maybe in her early twenties. She has both strength and fear in her dark eyes, and she's handing out pamphlets to the people sitting around her.

"The cold of this winter is not natural," she is telling everyone around her. "Our industries, our transportation, they are releasing pollutants into the air. These pollutants are raising the temperature of the world, which is causing changes in the way that the air circulates around the world. There are cold winds near the poles. And these cold winds normally stay at the poles, but due to the changing air circulations, they are coming further south, and giving us these periods of deep freeze. Unless we stop polluting the atmosphere and changing the global air circulation, we will continue getting horrible winters. And people will continue to suffer."

She's an activist type I guess. They're always saying these kinds of things. Usually I don't believe them. But now I'm thinking. It's never been this cold before, in my life. It's never been this cold before, and there is something deeply, deeply unnatural about this cold, there is something deeply, deeply wrong. I can't write her off. I don't know, perhaps she's speaking the truth. I take a pamphlet, and tell myself I'll read it later, at home.

When I get off the bus I once again see a group of homeless people, trailing through the city like ghosts, haunted and deeply wrong.

I go home. And my apartment is bare. It is the apartment I am used to, the apartment I have lived in for five years. The only pieces of furniture are the bed beside the screen door that leads to my balcony, and the table made of rough wood and the four accompanying chairs. But it's warm here. It's warm, and I can lie down and watch TV on the large-screened old television I bought for less than it was worth. Or I can read, or I can just lie here. It's a lonely life, but it's warm.

Lying under the blankets of my bed, I think about the homeless people I saw. I can't get them to leave my head. I can't leave them. I can't leave them like that. I have to help them. I resolve to help them, determination and fear both crystallizing in my spirit to be as strong as darkened iron.

I move to my table and get a sheet of paper and a pencil. How much money do I earn? I note it down. How much money do I spend on things I don't strictly need? I go over all my expenses in my mind. Every single thing that I buy and pay for. And I note down everything that I can go without and also note down how much money that could save me. I don't need to pay for TV shows, don't need to pay for trips to the restaurant, don't need to pay for trips to the museum. I don't need to buy food that isn't as cheap as possible, I can just buy the cheapest things there are. I shave off all the expenses I can.

But still, it's not enough. It's not enough to buy good winter clothes for the homeless people. I don't really buy expensive food, I buy relatively cheap food to begin with. And I don't go out on trips to restaurants or other places more than a couple of times a year. Not paying for TV will only give me a few dollars a month, since I'm already on the cheapest plan there is. I need to cut more expenses.

I decide to lower the heating in my apartment. To eat two meals a day. It will be hard, living like this. It will be very hard. But there are people suffering more than me. There are people suffering so much more than me. And I just have to help them out. I know in my heart, in my soul that I just have to help them out.

And so I struggle. I struggle and I struggle every day for two months straight. And it's hard, it's incredibly hard. Starving myself and going to work and doing all my work with an empty stomach, without all the calories I need to function, it's incredibly hard. I go home. And I lie in bed. And I think about how hungry I am, how exhausted I am, how trapped I am.

But I also go home and I think about all the people who don't have a home. Who are out there in the cold winter struggling. And I think, is this what the world is? Is this what my life is? Is this what my desire is? All my life I've been taught to work for myself. All my life I've been taught to take care of myself. To work hard for the sake of earning what I need. But what if life isn't about that? What if life is about taking care of others instead?

I struggle and I suffer and eventually I am able to save up enough money. The winter is still cold. Too cold. Unnaturally cold. I buy many thick coats, warm enough to keep someone comfortable through the harshest of winters. They are simple, black. I couldn't spend any money on aesthetics, not when I had to spend all my money on function. And anyways, I don't know what colours or styles anyone prefers. I also buy many thick mittens, many thick hats. They will help keep the folks' heads and extremities safe. I take all my clothing and go to the homeless shelter.

It is morning right now. The doors of the homeless shelter are opening, and people are spilling out. The homeless shelter is a large, boxy brick building, wider than it is tall. The doors are dark, and people are flowing out of them, with worn-down, life-weary eyes. They are trying to strengthen themselves against the cold, against the storming winds, and they do not have as much strength as they need.

I am standing on the other side of the street, in front of some shop windows made of glass. I tell the people that I have good clothes for them. And there is a tentative hope in their faces. A group of people walks over to me. They stand in front of the shop windows. They stand on the cracked sidewalk that is coated in ice. They take the clothes. Start trying them on to see what fits who.

But there isn't enough for all of them. There are so many people here in this crowd, and there isn't enough clothing to cover all of them. Still, they share the clothes with each other. They talk amongst each other, seeing what fits who, seeing who volunteers to take what. The people who are sick, they end up with the coats. They deny them initially, but all the others insist. Everyone else either takes a hat or a pair of mittens. Everyone can at least take one thing, everyone can take something, and it's not enough, but it brings me a bit of joy.

But more people come out of the homeless shelter. They see the crowd gathered here on the sidewalk. And they come to us, and ask their peers what's going on.

"This man is giving us clothing," someone tells them.

The newcomers ask if they can have some.

"We don't have any left," a person mournfully explains.

I see their eyes. In that moment, I know. I know that my country is not a good country. My country is not a righteous country, it is not a just country, it is pure evil. My country, which calls itself good and just, is nothing but corruption and evil. Because we do not even take care of these people, the most vulnerable people we have. We do not even shelter these vulnerable, desperate people from horrific violence and harm. What are we except exceptionally cruel?

The government of this country does not care about human life, it does not care about human needs, it does not care about human dignity. It does not care about being good in the true ways. Because if it did, then it would take care of the vulnerable people here. The government is cruel and unjust and vicious.

And I realize now, that if my country and my government can do this to their own people, if they can inflict such violence and such cruelty and such unjust wrath upon their own people, then what they do to the people in other countries is so much worse.

I am horrified. Horrified at what is happening before my eyes and at what is for sure happening far away, far where I can't see it.

I bid the good people goodbye, and they clasp my hands, thank me for my gifts, and then I take the bus home.

At my apartment, I think. I think about the words the activists have told me throughout the years. We're polluting the world. We're destroying the world. I can see that now. I can see how the world we all live on can't help us anymore.

They also said that our country was evil, our government was evil, our military which listened to the orders of the government was evil. And I believe that now. Seeing evil in front of my eyes, in this way, I believe that now.

I think of all the people in the countries we send our soldiers to. I think of them in their houses, in the streets, at their jobs. I think of bombs falling over them, reducing their homes, their livelihoods, their infrastructure, and their natural lands to rubble. I think of the tanks rolling through their cities and towns and villages and countrysides. I think of the people dying under the bombs, under the artillery, getting shot by soldiers being careless or intentionally malicious.

I think of the families, the friends, the neighbours, the coworkers people leave behind. I think of the grief, the fear, the hurting. I think of the hunger that comes from destroyed crops and killed livestock. I think of the sickness that comes from drinking dirty water, because water purification plants and clean water sources are destroyed. I think of the pain, of the fear, of the mourning. And I can see it. I can see it in front of my eyes.

I know what I have to do now.

I call my job. Tell them that I'm quitting. They are dumbstruck. They ask me how I'll afford food. And I have no idea. I have no idea how I'll afford food. But I cannot do this anymore.

Except, it's not enough. It's not nearly enough. And I know what I can do. I know what I can do next. To bring at least a little bit of justice into the world. To maybe save at least one person.

I still have the key to get into the weapons factory. I still have the key, I haven't given it up yet, and I can still get in, for now. I wait until it is nighttime. And I go to the weapons factory, during the time when no one is in it. I open the door with my key. And I am inside.

There is gasoline here. Tanks of it. Usually for war vehicles. And I know where it's kept. Using all my strength, I drag one large barrel of gasoline around the factory, pouring out the pungent liquid as I go. Then I do the same with another barrel, in another section of the factory. I have to go fast. I have to get this done before anyone finds me out.

This takes more strength than I have, but in my determination and my horror I find the strength. The determination and drive that flows through me makes me stronger than steel, and it makes me find the energy to keep going, keep going, because this one thing I have to do, to prevent more people from dying. My heart is thudding in my chest in both deep fear and immense bravery.

I am here in the factory during a time when no one else is here. Of course, this helps me not get caught. But I chose to do this now, when the factory is empty, for a deeper reason.

The people who work here, I don't know how guilty they are in this whole situation. Maybe they joined work in a weapons factory because they were willfully ignorant, like me, or because they wanted to harm people in other countries. Or they may have joined this work because they were looking for work for a long time, and they needed to be fed and clothed and sheltered, and they needed a job to keep the poverty away. When I was looking for a job, I didn't want to work in the weapons industry. So I looked in other industries at first. But I went so long without finding anything, and I thought that this might be the only place that accepts me. Maybe others were in a similar situation.

Would that make them innocent in all of this? I don't know. Would that make them undeserving of punishment, undeserving of death? I don't know. All I do know is that if I am responsible for even more deaths, I will have even more blood on my hands. And I'm not willing to risk that.

Finally every part of the factory is coated in oil. I put oil on the floor, on the shelves, everywhere. The outside of the factory might be brick, but the inside floors, walls, shelves, they're all wood. They're all wood and what's more, most of the flammable sprays and powders will burst into flames when the fire touches them. I get a match from my pocket, light it, and drop it into the puddle of oil in front of the factory door. I leave as the building bursts into flames behind me.

I briefly turn around to see the bright yellow-orange flames rising into the dark night sky.

I know, I know not everything will be destroyed in the fire. The outer shell of the building for example. And a lot of the heavier metal parts. But the flammable stuff will be destroyed. Thin pieces of metal on any of the equipment will be deformed by the heat. All the microchips that do essential computing tasks in a variety of different weapons, as well as all the microchips in the circuitry of the equipment we use, will be damaged by the heat. This is good. This is very good.

The less weapons our country has, the longer it takes to make weapons, the more lives will be saved. Destroying the factory, it destroyed many of the weapons that were already inside. It destroyed the components that are necessary to make new weapons. It destroyed the facility and the equipment needed to make more weapons. Many parts will need to be replaced, a lot of equipment will need to be replaced, the factory will need to be rebuilt. And that will divert time and resources away from the immediate slaughter of people in other parts of the world. That will give people in other parts of the world a couple of months in which less machines of war are bombarding and murdering them.

I go back to my apartment in the cover of the night. And I try to sleep. I try to sleep, but I cannot. I toss and turn and I think about all the people in the other parts of the world, all the people who are suffering. I know that what I did was taking a drop out of an ocean. I know that I didn't solve the problem, that unnumbered people are continuing to die and to grieve and to hurt and to suffer, that unnumbered people will continue to die and to grieve and to hurt and to suffer for an unknown period of time far into the future. I'm not going to change the system, the system that will continue on murdering people.

But if I save even one person for even one day, that's something.

Eventually the first light of dawn is brightening the sky outside. I wrap myself up in my blanket and turn on the TV, sitting on my bed. I flip to the news. And as I suspected, they are talking about the factory fire I caused. They show footage of the burnt factory. They comment that the fire was definitely human-caused, that anything flammable in the factory was supposed to be safely stored. They remark that the fire alarms were not pulled, so whoever did it did it intentionally, without a desire for the fire to be put out by the fire brigade. They wonder who it could be that burned the factory down.

I realize, that the police will be looking for the perpetrator. The police will be looking for the perpetrator and their first suspect will be me. I quit my job just yesterday, for no known reason. I still have the key to the factory. Who else would it be? They will try to find me, and they will come to my apartment with their guns and dogs and tasers. I have to leave. I have to leave if I want to stay out of jail, or stay alive even.

I put my coat on, the coat that does not protect me adequately against the harsh winter. I put my hat and mittens on. Where can I go? Where can I go? The few friends I have won't take me in. My parents won't shelter me. And even if someone did offer me protection, the police would know I'm connected to them and would come to search their houses. If they get caught with me, which they will, they will be arrested too. I can't put anyone through that danger, even if they did want to take me in.

I guess I'll have to disappear into the streets of the city. Lose my apartment, lose my possessions, and melt into this winter, melt into the freezing masses that also have nowhere to go, who are forgotten by society. I suppose it's right. The people who started my journey are the people who I will become part of. I pull my black loop scarf over my face like a mask, I open the door, and I step out into the cold.



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