THE CHRISTMAS BARDO

Bardo - (in Tibetan Buddhism) the state of the soul between its death and its rebirth

Coughing and spluttering, I've emerged from my Christmas bardo, that period between Christmas and New Year where the past draws back like the sea from the shore and one waits with semi-baited breath for the prospect of a new year.

It's in this strange no man's land of time, where it's easy to lose track of minutes, hours, days and weeks that one begins to speculate on the entire construct of time itself. Could such a reality exist whereby we might live continuously in this state of timelessness? Oh wait, it was called lockdown, except the Christmas bardo is a far more sacred and meaningful place if its purpose is properly understood, for it is a period in which life, death and everything in-between converge to create a passageway to a new dawn.

"Here, space becomes time" - Gurmananz from Act 1 of Wagner's 'Parsifal'

Otherwise known as 'Twixmas', these introspective and occasionally melancholy few days, where one happily depletes the last of the bottles of mulled wine as well as snaffling the last of the cheese and biscuits all the while casting a lazy eye at the technicolour spectacles of MGM musicals from yesteryear on the television, are actually not dissimilar to the gestation period between conception and birth when we are thrust into life, only with a little less amniotic fluid.

Be under no illusion if you're feeling a little mopey and devoid of energy, the Christmas bardo represents the Y shaped frame of a slingshot preparing to relaunch you into a brand new year, reborn with new hopes and dreams for a brighter future, even if January does its damnedest to snuff out those same hopes and dreams before they've had time to migrate beyond the front door, past the withered looking advent wreath that hangs forlornly like a vacant bird's nest.

Still, it is important for us to use the opportunity of this strange and unfocused time to enjoy the sensation of freedom from the tyranny of the calendar and do our best to dream ourselves into the subtle transition between last year and the new so that we can enjoy a sense of some kind of new beginning to at least trick ourselves in believing that things might possibly get better.

Of course, you don't need the Christmas bardo to remind yourself of that.

Cock-eyed optimism (contrived or otherwise) is an all year phenomenon (at least for me) and I've got enough to go round for all of us.