I love the fact that in our modern sense of winter I can grow a Myer lemon in my house. I remember in 2011 after our trip to Italy I was inspired to try. Each year since then my friends make fun of my spindly tree that hangs low with two or three lemons each season. With our warm house and digital communication I can grow a lemon, take images of my pots on drawings and share the days of diminishing light with far flung friends. It is a way to find meaning and my way through the maze of a dark and hectic season. The solstice is literally a moment of pause. Writing and photographing is another form of pausing time to find the beautiful, the peaceful, and the mix of mystery that vibrates between the historical and modern worlds.
"A taste for winter, a love for winter vistas -- a belief that they are as
beautiful and seductive in their own way, and as essential to the human
spirit and the human soul as any summer scene -- is part of the modern
condition. Wallace Stevens, in his poem "The Snow Man," called this new
feeling "a mind of winter," and he identified it with our new acceptance
of a world without illusions, our readiness to live in a world that
might have meaning but that doesn't have God. A mind of winter, a mind for
winter, not sensing the season as a loss of warmth and light, and with
them hope of life and divinity, but ready to respond to it as a
positive, and even purifying, presence of something else -- the beautiful
and peaceful, yes, but also the mysterious, the strange, the sublime --
is a modern taste."
--Adam Gopnick
"A taste for winter, a love for winter vistas -- a belief that they are as
beautiful and seductive in their own way, and as essential to the human
spirit and the human soul as any summer scene -- is part of the modern
condition. Wallace Stevens, in his poem "The Snow Man," called this new
feeling "a mind of winter," and he identified it with our new acceptance
of a world without illusions, our readiness to live in a world that
might have meaning but that doesn't have God. A mind of winter, a mind for
winter, not sensing the season as a loss of warmth and light, and with
them hope of life and divinity, but ready to respond to it as a
positive, and even purifying, presence of something else -- the beautiful
and peaceful, yes, but also the mysterious, the strange, the sublime --
is a modern taste." --Adam Gopnick
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