Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
Once we stop wishing it were summer, winter can be a glorious season in which the world takes on a sparse beauty and even the pavements sparkle. It’s a time for reflection and recuperation, for slow replenishment, for putting your house in order.
Katherine May • Wintering
People from another planet will wonder what’s wrong with earthly names, that it takes so many different ones to tag a thing. But here he lies, alongside this friend he has known only weeks, joined again after so many lifetimes. Nick and Olivia, Watchman and Maidenhair—the complete quartet of them—open to the January night, under topless columns of
... See moreRichard Powers • The Overstory: A Novel
One story from the D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths stayed with me powerfully: the story of Persephone. She was the daughter of Zeus and Demeter, who actually oversees more than just grain—she guides the whole of agriculture and reproduction, among other things. But beloved Persephone is abducted by Hades, god of the dead, the underworld, the devil
... See moreSasha Sagan • For Small Creatures Such as We: Rituals for Finding Meaning in Our Unlikely World
A Christmas Hymn
Richard Wilbur • Poems Of Richard Wilbur
“Yet when we understand winter in the natural world, we realize that what we see out there is not death so much as dormancy. Some life has died, of course. But much of it has gone underground, into hibernation, awaiting a season of renewal and rebirth. So winter invites us to name whatever feels dead in us, to wonder whether it might in fact be
... See moreIn the northern hemisphere, the majority of living beings die of an illness that’s called winter.
Juan José Millás • Life As Told by a Sapiens to a Neanderthal
We, too, know that winters are coming. For many of us it is the ruling fact: the whole year is surrendered to the cold. The thoughts and itineraries of the summer are the lackeys of the dark.
I fight hard against this demonic capitulation, but it is hard to enjoy an August day qua August day. The stronger the fight, the greater the acknowledgment of
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