Leonine concentration
As I get older, I have a stronger sense of needing this kind of concentration. So many dreams and projects to realise, filling more space than the (likely) time available to complete them. This has made me less tolerant of things which seem inessential and jejune,...
The grammar and syntax of inspiration
Picasso is said to have said that inspiration exists but needs to find you working. Similar in sentiment is Saint-Exupéry’s thoughts on illumination. Yes, it can strike you suddenly and apparently miraculously, but only if you’ve made the effort to learn...
Of radical innocence
Innocence is one of the key themes we chose for this website (here’s why), and I believe Dante backs me up. I mean innocence and not naivety, and see it as needing a form of resilience to be maintained in a human life despite being aware of and involved in the...
Relationships matter
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...
Make your soul grow
A warm and wise letter written by Kurt Vonnegut in 2006 in response to one received from a class – and its teacher Miss Lockwood – at Xavier High School. It gives nuannaarpoqian advice to young minds (and to Miss Lockwood), and is here read out charmingly...
Long way to go
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...
Life as a reprieve
In the day to day whoosh of things to do and deal with, we may be conscious of our time being limited on a daily or hourly basis, but often forget the bigger time limit, life itself.  The grandmother of the French artist Françoise Gilot reminds us that life is a...
This is my life
A succinct testimony to a life aligned with its owner. Rebanks has also spent decades trying to align farming in an industrialised, globalised context with his values and the demands of sustainability. Despite the pressures, he easily concludes he wouldn’t...
Man has a long time to go
Some wise words from Aaron Copland to a young Leonard Bernstein. They maintained a close friendship and correspondence for decades, and I like the advice. It reminds me of a word from a father to a daughter in an American novel: ‘Slow down, Ivy, slow...
The tricky business of simple living
An interesting character in Goncharov’s 1859 novel Oblomov is Andrey, close friend of the eponymous hero. He starts out as an exuberant, feisty boy and grows into a disarmingly and ebulliently self-assured, balanced and capable man who tries to rouse his...
Bursting the boundaries
A wonderful comment on life – you can come up with as many fine formulae as you like, it will sooner or later defy our clever definitions. Life always bursts the boundaries of formulas. Part of me says, ‘Thank goodness’. For other comments on this...
Live wisely, live well
Isn’t this all we’re trying to do when we talk about ‘sustainability’, ‘circular economy’, or climate change? When it’s put so simply, it sounds easy, but we have a long way to go before we can see our stifling ignorance fall...
Leaning into the light
The candour of this statement struck me, and also reassured me that my own paltry attempts at living a ‘moral and compassionate existence’ are no worse than can be expected of an average human in a human world. I accepted very young that questioning is...
Begin with breakfast
Wondering how best to get this bright new year off to a good start? Follow this sound advice from the Swallows & Amazons family.  I got up early to make what I thought were muffins until, having liberally adapted the recipe, I realized it was meant to be for...
Calm and contentment
Christian Ludwig seems to have been a wise man, able to look on things with calm and contentment. He lived at a time no less tumultuous, and perhaps in some ways more so, than our own. A reminder to cleave to the good and keep one’s equanimity.Your calm, the...
A perfect process
My kind of decision-making process, superbly succinct and balanced. Not sure how much I live up to it, but certainly one to aspire to.Reflect coldly! And then act with fire!  Source: Friedrich Hölderlin, letter to Karl Gok, 21 August 1794, Essays and Letters, trans....
Seven steps to heaven
Now I know why it’s called ‘seventh’ heaven – it takes only seven steps to get there. I stumbled upon this revelation while doing the Spring Circular, the 10km round robin walk with which I’ve been savouring the season’s renewal. A...
To be what we are
Another interesting take on authenticity. I like Thoreau’s hopeful assumption that being what we are leans towards worthy and nobler qualities.And curious about that invitation – what or who does he believe is inviting us to be ourselves?’We are...
The chief element of happiness
How contemporary this sounds, and yet it is a five-hundred year old classic. Erasmus reaching down the centuries by speaking lightly in the voice of a woman and, what is more, a woman self-styled as the goddess of folly. He manages to imbue her with such witty...
Nuannaarpoq Interviews – Question 003
‘If you had an opportunity to put a question to Socrates what would it be?’ This is a quotation from Lawrence Durrell’s enchanting exploration of the island of Corfu, Prospero’s Cell. I have been pondering it for months and decided it was a good question...
Unload your heart of grief
What a kind, loving, compassionate injunction to Dante. Keep it in mind if you find yourself berating yourself. And if you are experiencing grief, I hope you find the means to unload it soon.  “Much greater faults than yours are washed awayBy much less...
The tempests of change
This seems a lesson in authenticity. Those occasional moments when you say, do or think something and suddenly it rings hollow and tastes metallic, and you wonder who that person is because it isn’t you, that much you know. Such disconcerting feelings of being...
Introducing the Isumataq School of Leadership
Barry Lopez’ masterful Arctic Dreams gave me an inkling of a richly philosophical seam in Eskimo language. If you watch, read or listen to the news, you may despair at the apparent absence of anything resembling an isumataq in the upper echelons of government,...Yes, sign me up!
