happiness, moments, sleep
Nothing like flopping, tumbling, folding into a simple bed after a hard day’s work or activity, stretching your limbs, wiggling your toes, and sinking into sweet sleep. Nothing seemed to me more miraculous than that simple bed in that bare and freezing...
freedom, happiness, moments, sleep
Something magical about moments of morning idleness in idyllic spots. Surely they allow some quiet clean up of over-burdened minds, or just some simple reprieve from restless strivings? But still, leisure has its rewards here as well: idle mornings of meditation in...
authenticity, discovery, enchantment, freedom, happiness, humour, innocence, moments, nuannaarpoq, sharing
This post is also available as a podcast on Spotify, click here to listen. We were recently invited to spend a few days with friends at their place on the beach. Among other things, I enjoyed watching children and their families playing in the water and the sand....
happiness, moments, nuannaarpoq, sleep
… an otter? Not the obvious simile, but according to this, true. This curious fact lies alongside the revelation that when the otter decided it was time to get up, his human handler had to get up to – the animal went through an elaborate process of...
authenticity, freedom, happiness, moments, nuannaarpoq
Otters are playful and their element is water. Here Gavin Maxwell’s companion Mij, having figured out where the bathroom is, slips between his human handler’s legs and makes a dash for the source of water. By the time I had caught up with him he was up on...
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...
enchantment, moments, nuannaarpoq, sharing
A marvelous moment shared by the poet Elizabeth Bishop, conveying a connection across species and elements, as a seal allows a human to sing for him, a common interest in music binding them across the water-land divide. One seal particularly I have seen here evening...
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...
happiness, moments, nuannaarpoq, sharing
A Russian woman who lived in Abkhazia describes a local custom we might all like to adopt. As a means to extend your lifespan, I can’t think of anything more delightful. According to Abkhazian custom, the time you spend with guests around the table...
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...
happiness, moments, sharing
Must be the Brit in me, but I love detailed descriptions of sumptuous teas and picnics, although I have failed to win my Italian husband over to either concept. So abject has my failure been that when I once mentioned a picnic, he innocently asked, ‘But why do...
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...
authenticity, kindness, moments
How about this loving description of a driver who charms Golding in Istanbul, handing him and his companion endearing gifts. None of which prevented him charging them a pile of dosh for his services. His heart was as golden as his teeth, for we had not been in the...
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...
happiness, moments
A wonderful statement, not to mention breakfast. First, the decadent breakfast, and then the inspired allocation of truffles to the world history of folly, and that delightful conflation of folly with art. The truffles must have gone to his head. Good for him. ...
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...
authenticity, discovery, enchantment, happiness, innocence, moments, nuannaarpoq, sharing
James Rebanks describes a touching element during a class visit to his farm, where one little boy finds solace in simply gathering some eggs or watching the dogs work with the sheep. One day a class came from a distant town, and we were told that one little boy was...
beauty, discovery, enchantment, happiness, memory, moments, nuannaarpoq, sharing
James Rebanks describes a nuannaarpoq moment with his daughter, watching a white owl hunt. And he wishes her all a loving parent could wish a child along with the hope that this magical moment will live on in her memory.    I hope Bea lives for a hundred more years. ...
colour, happiness, moments
Elizabeth Bowen’s mouth-watering description of eating a Sicilian orange in Rome deserves a place at the Nuannaarpoq table. And I read it a few weeks after moving to Italy and beginning to find red, sweet oranges of a quality I’ve rarely encountered...
authenticity, moments, sharing
Indeed, often when you love, you take in a whole person, sometimes in an instant, and don’t create a composite of features and qualities. And much of what you respond to is intangible and even invisible.  How did he look? What like was he? Was he...
life, moments, sharing
The cool and collected Narziss finally tells his lifelong friend Goldmund how much he means to him. Goldmund wanders the world for years, the wilder of the two, and perhaps in some senses the less wise, eventually returning to his childhood home, and friend-mentor...
beauty, colour, discovery, enchantment, happiness, moments
A blazingly limpid landscape on the island of Thera, plunging down to the sea, with flashes of passing birds and lizards over patterned stones and anchored plants. But there is a delicate order, too, imposed by tracery of asphodel and grape-hyacinth, purple mallow and...
