beauty, discovery, imagination
There are those who suggest that understanding too much of the workings of things diminishes our sense of wonder. Like many, I believe the opposite, the more we understand, the more pleasure we can derive from this complex thing called the universe.  Thus to a man...
beauty, happiness
A simple reminder to enjoy the beauties of life at home, whenever you can. Since the news is full of people losing their homes to war or natural disaster, it is worth remembering how wonderful a secure home is. Life could be beautiful, thought the old traveller,...
beauty, enchantment
After an extended Indian summer, the last few days we’ve seen early morning mists and a delicious freshness to dawn and dusk. I always feel sorry when summer fades and then have a surprise at the recurring mellow beauty of its successor. This year, as the...
beauty, enchantment, innocence
A lovely preparation for the bride of a god, including cowslip-ruby bejewelled acorn cups. Some stole the light from glow-worms’ tails, and wove it into a necklace, and others pulled the ruby spots from cowslip leaves, to set with jewels the acorn cups that...
beauty, colour, discovery, enchantment
What a teacher, this god who exhales perfumes and offers to impart his knowledge of nature’s flourishing. And what a syllabus: “I am the genius of clouds and sunshine,” answered Frey; and as he spoke, the essences of a hundred perfumes were exhaled...
beauty, imagination, resilience
I recently read Thucydides on the beach and was struck by how contemporary, or perhaps just timeless, he is. Here is a thoughtful reflection in one of his reported speeches; you can love beauty of things and of the mind without going soft. Our love of what is...
beauty, colour, enchantment, moments, sharing
The poet Rilke, writing to Elisabeth Ephrussi, told her to: ‘Look into the blue of the hyacinths. And the spring!’ Well? What are we waiting for? Let’s go and find a hyacinth and then inhale its heady perfume! And meet their wild cousins, the...
beauty, discovery, enchantment, imagination, inspiration
I love the word ‘hoard’, in the sense of a bardic ‘word-hoard’, or here, a hoard of observations you stash in the cupboard of the imagination, a mind-hoard. And I like the absolution from having to understand those bright-shining things you...
authenticity, awards, beauty, enchantment, happiness, innocence, kindness, moments, resilience
Our fifth nominee for a Nuannaarpoq Award is: Maria Voiteshonok Parameters:Â 20th-21st centuries, Russian, real, human, female, living Nuannaarpoq qualities:Â authenticity, beauty, enchantment, innocence, kindness, resilience References: ‘The story of a...
beauty, humour, inspiration, nuannaarpoq, sharing
A wonderful story of a woman who decides her grandchildren need to spend more time looking at nature and talking to people. I loved her humorous and decisive course of action and the fact that she was so loved by her family that they forgave her technological...
beauty, discovery, kindness, moments, sharing
This Russian writer remembers moments in her harsh Siberian childhood where someone showed passing kindness and in so doing, made her and her sister feel they were recognised as human beings. Coming as they did from a family of political exiles, in a system where the...
beauty, colour, discovery, enchantment, happiness, innocence, moments, resilience
This moving quotation is from an interview with a Russian writer who grew up in Siberia, born of a family which was politically exiled during the Soviet era, meaning that both she and her sister began life living, quite literally, underground, and were later...
beauty, resilience
This is from a collection of interviews with Russian people by the Nobel-prize winning journalist Svetlana Alexievich. Here, one of them explains why there is one sight she has never tired of, and not only due to its beauty. The one thing I haven’t got sick of...
beauty, happiness, moments, sharing
Such a comforting line this, from a letter by the German poet Hölderlin. The sky and the air embrace me like a cradle-song.May they embrace you, too. And here is another thought of Hölderlin, on a peaceful state of work; and in another letter, his admiration for a...
beauty, colour
A lovely summer image of blueness infusing the landscape. The hills Lullingford way were blue as a summer sky, a deep promising blue, and there was a richness on the world. Wishing you richness on the world, wherever you are. Source: Mary Webb, Precious Bane...
beauty, discovery, enchantment
Attributed to Einstein, this gives us two clear-cut approaches to life. Babies and small children seem more alive to the miraculous but a challenge for adults is that of both seeing the world as it is, tragedy and all, while maintaining that miraculous sense. Or, to...
authenticity, awards, beauty, colour, enchantment, freedom, happiness, humour, imagination, innocence, inspiration, kindness, nuannaarpoq, resilience, sleep
Our fourth nominee for a Nuannaarpoq Award is: John Keats (1795-1821) Parameters:Â 18th-19th centuries, British, real, human, male, now living elsewhere Nuannaarpoq qualities:Â authenticity, creativity, enchantment, happiness, freedom, imagination, kindness, life,...
beauty, discovery, moments
I found this somehow touching, the way the parent dolphins don’t overstretch their offspring. Also curious about the fact that the calves always stayed on the right side of the mother and in seeking a photo, it struck me that this appears to be a calf …...
beauty, discovery, moments
A magical description of ephemeral islands rising and sinking with time and tide. From Maxwell’s fine account of time spent on a Scottish island, anything but ephemeral. Sand bars as white as snow-drifts and jewelled with bright shells rise between the islands...
authenticity, beauty, colour, inspiration, life
This poem, ‘Into Battle’, was written in 1915 by an officer serving in the First World War, Julian Grenfell. It was published in The Times the day after his death from war wounds. The poems draws on different threads of life as providing strength to the...
beauty, colour, discovery, enchantment, inspiration
Next time your mind is roiling, look outside and see if you can spot any birds, and then watch them. Their capacity to survive, their resilience and resourcefulness, and their sheer uncomplaining chirpiness can often air-lift us out of anxiety. Or at least provide a...
beauty, colour, resilience
Isn’t that exhilarating, the land shouting with grass? And due to successive years of dousing rain, it feels lush and burstingly, verdantly abundant.   There would be five or six wet and wonderful years when there might be nineteen to twenty-five inches of...
beauty, colour, enchantment, moments
A searching definition for the precise shade of California poppies, as recalled in Steinbeck’s East of Eden. Not orange, you understand, but golden cream.And mixed with these were splashes of California poppies. These too are of a burning color – not...
beauty, colour, discovery, enchantment, happiness, innocence, memory, nuannaarpoq
A powerful recall of childhood memories regarding the names of plants, the homes of toads, the awakening of birds and the smell of both seasons and trees. A surprisingly gentle recollection in a book which has plenty of violence. I started learning the names of...
