happiness, life, resilience
A recent article had a doctor refer to our ‘short, breakable lives’, reminding us of this fragility. Here is Nicolson’s take on Homer: Homer knows that life is fragile, love suffers hurt and death comes; and that the moments on a hillside in the...
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...
freedom, resilience
A servant is taken advantage of once too often and swears never again to lower herself, literally or figuratively. Note the task demanded was ‘on her afternoon off’. Joyce’s stint as a general maid in a grocer’s household was cut short only...
inspiration, resilience
It’s years since I noted this quote and it has recently made its way to the front of the nuannaarpoq pipeline. But only reading it again now do I see how much it resonates with the urgencies of rebalancing our relationship with the natural world around us, and...
happiness, inspiration, life, resilience
Caroline goes through a period of malaise and fear for her future, with illness en route. I believe in my heart we were intended to prize life and enjoy it, so long as we retain it. Existence never was originally meant to be that useless, blank, pale, slow-trailing...
freedom, resilience
A deeply reassuring place this, with sunlit air and safety. .. a different air blew there, and as if there was a brighter sun and a safer daylight. Wishing you a safer daylight wherever you are.  Source: Mary Webb, Precious Bane (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981), p....
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...
authenticity, happiness, innocence, kindness, resilience
After years of exile, deprivation and harshness, some kindness is shown to two young girls cursed by having had politically tarnished parents, leading to a protracted period in Siberia. The elder sister, Vladya, had tuberculosis, picked up while living quite...
happiness, imagination, innocence, resilience
This excerpt from an interview with a Russian writer brought up in Siberia, due to the political exile of her parents, demonstrates the child’s deep need to play and the imagination which led her to create her own dolls, despite poverty, exclusion and general...
discovery, enchantment, innocence, inspiration, resilience, sharing
An extraordinary account by a Russian writer, recounting how she and her sister, surviving as near beggars due to the political exile imposed on their parents in the Soviet Union, managed to think about poetry even while starved of food and kindness.  Their living...
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...
inspiration, resilience
A wonderful voice of hope, wryly recognising, however, that potential can be fragile, as eggs can break. But then again, they can hatch…In fact, the world is full of hopeful analogies and handsome dubious eggs called possibilities. May your dubious eggs of...
freedom, happiness, kindness, resilience, sharing
Freed from labour camp in September 1953, following the demise of Stalin, the few survivors still standing left the camp and headed for the nearby village, where they were given a simple, spontaneous and sensitive welcome.As I was thinking this a girl between eight...
happiness, memory, resilience
The Hungarian poet György Faludy had a full dose of adventure in his long life. On the eve of the Second World War he opted to leave his native country rather than get caught up fighting for Hitler. Spending time in France and Morocco before reaching the US and...
happiness, resilience
Barry Lopez sums up the challenge of adulthood: how to face and acknowledge the ‘dark threads of life’ while somehow living in an exemplary way (I would add ‘joyously’, though that may be a stretch goal). We watched a film about the Via...
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, 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, resilience
Yes, I have a lifelong attraction to the ‘timeless’, namely, things which retain our admiration or affection over centuries or millennia, due to an ineffable quality of not becoming dated, even if firmly rooted in a given time.Zbigniew Herbert has...
authenticity, discovery, resilience
James Rebanks had a childhood awakening when accompanying his grandfather on a tractor, making the connection between his family, their farm, and the gulls and the plough. It’s a fitting start to a heartfelt journey from that ‘ancient farming world’...
authenticity, resilience, time
I love the slowness of timber growth and durability. Years ago my brother introduced me to the notion of tempering timber to make it more long-lasting and since then I’ve been captivated by accounts of growing and using wood in a cycle amply exceeding a (human)...
authenticity, freedom, happiness, inspiration, resilience
An interesting piece of aunt-like advice from Martha Gellhorn to Leonard Bernstein.  She emphasises the importance of not only finding a nugget of peace within yourself, and the conditions to nurture it, but the fact that maintaining it is a constant endeavour, if...
authenticity, awards, beauty, colour, enchantment, freedom, happiness, imagination, innocence, inspiration, kindness, life, resilience
Our third nominee for a Nuannaarpoq Award is: Mary Delany (1700-1788) Parameters:Â 18th century, British, real, human, female, now living elsewhere Nuannaarpoq qualities: authenticity, enchantment, imagination, innocence, kindness, resilience References:Â Molly...
freedom, resilience
It’s a few years since I read Steinbeck’s account of his visit to the Soviet Union with the photographer Robert Capa. A wonderful book full of humour and empathy. Among the many quotations I jotted down was this one, concerning the time they spent in...
