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...
inspiration, sharing
An unusual presentation of love as being woven from threads of fulfillment. This is how I always thought of it, without having found the words, and how I have found it to be. Saint-Exupery’s love-fabric also echoes a simile by Mary Webb.  This is the veritable...
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...
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...
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...
innocence, kindness, sharing
An image of both friendliness and security, a place where you can leave your gate open. Eventually they reached an open gate – open because in those days life in the country was so secure that a closed gate signified either unfriendliness or else that the owners...
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...
life, sharing
Saint-Exupery highlights the essentials of life revealed at the moment of death. A reminder to be conscious of the mesh of relationships binding us to life, while we live. And I would expand the notion to include our relationships to places and other species. When...
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...
discovery, memory, sharing
The Hungarian poet Faludy gives an enticing description of his grandfather, seen through a boy’s eyes. I like how he pitches his speech appropriately for a child, consciously or not. Also the idea that his words sunk into the young mind, and were understood...
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. ...
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...
authenticity, sharing
This lovely metaphor for love is from a fine story of it by Mary Webb. I found this quotation around the same time as another by a quite different writer, Saint-Exupery, which similarly refers to the weaving strands of love.I thought maybe love was like that – a...
beauty, colour, discovery, enchantment, happiness, sharing
Zorba, one of the world’s great nuannaarpoqians, questions the soul-expanding miracle of wine. A key aspects of his vivid living is his constant questioning and fresh experience of ordinary things. Nothing jaded or stale about his engagement with what many...
beauty, colour, discovery, enchantment, innocence, sharing
A moment when the two main characters of Bronte’s less well known novel get to know each other. Shirley, newly arrived, proposes a day in the woods to Caroline, who knows the land and the calendar of its changes in minute detail, a mental map she is happy to...
happiness, moments, sharing
It is unbelievable how good bread and cheese can taste, washed down with some form of liquid amber, when you are on a terrace over a blue chasm, or sitting on a rock or a bench during a hike or a bike ride. I love such moments captured and committed to memory so we...
beauty, discovery, happiness, moments, sharing
Golding describes a moment, a scene, on the island of Corfu, experienced during his own odyssey in search of Ithaka. I like that he wants us to share that moment, as elsewhere he sends a note to the future.  And if you were to describe a moment that you wish others...
happiness, innocence, kindness, sharing
After decades in a concentration camp, this man finds love in kindness. After being released from the clutches of the gulag, he rents a room in the flat where she lives with her son. Over time, he sees her kindness, and in it, beauty, and finds a period of love,...
life, sharing
One day I decided not to rely solely on Charlton Heston’s interpretation of El Cid but to go to the original (with the aid of a parallel translation). The epic Song of the Cid dates from around the second half of the 12th century and in places has a touching...
