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With the arrival of the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, the winter season has truly arrived. And yet — though we are one day closer to spring — I try to remind myself that these darker winter days have a beauty of their own, a time of nurturing and repose … of creativity waiting to be born.

I love these two quotes for reminding me that winter has a magic all its own, and that warmer days will arrive when we — and the earth — is ready.

“I prefer winter and Fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape – the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn’t show. ”     

— Andrew Wyeth

“The winter solstice has always been special to me as a barren darkness that gives birth to a verdant future beyond imagination, a time of pain and withdrawal that produces something joyfully inconceivable, like a monarch butterfly masterfully extracting itself from the confines of its cocoon, bursting forth into unexpected glory.” 

— Gary Zukav    

November has its own special mood and flavour — trailing the very last days of summer while hinting at the winter to come.

I love this line from EM Forster’s novel, Howard’s End.

“The house was very quiet, and the fog—we are in November now—pressed against the windows like an excluded ghost.”

October is a month of literary prizes … and I was thrilled to learn that Olga Tokarczuk (the 2018 Booker winner) was awarded the Nobel this year (along with Peter Handke) for her novel, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead.

I’m also grateful that Antonia Lloyd-Jones’ deft English translation has made Tokarczuk’s astounding novel available to a wider audience. I look forward to reading more work from this psychologically astute and lyrical writer.

… here’s how Tokarczuk’s prize-winning novel begins:

I. Now Pay Attention

Once meek, and in a perilous path, The just man kept his course along The vale of death.

I am already at an age and additionally in a state where I must always wash my feet thoroughly before bed, in the event of having to be removed by an ambulance in the Night.

Had I examined he Ephemerides that evening to see what was happening in the sky, I wouldn’t have gone to bed at all. Meanwhile I had fallen very fast asleep; I had helped myself with an infusion of hops, and I also took two valerian pills. So when I was woken in the middle of the Night by hammering on the door — violent, immoderate and thus ill-omened — I was unable to come round.

— From Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk