north

Slush is frozen over. People say that winter lasts forever, but it's because they obsess over the thermometer. North in the mountains, the maple syrup is trickling. Brave geese punch through the thin ice left on the lake. Underground, pale seeds roll over in their sleep. Starting to get restless. Starting to dream green.

To understand pretending is to conquer all barriers of time and space.

A compass calibrated by my greed is a rather shrewd way to legitimize my agenda. However, true north on a compass such as this is a straight line to the edge of a really big cliff.

Every culture has its southerners -- people who work as little as they can, preferring to dance, drink, sing brawl, kill their unfaithful spouses; who have livelier gestures, more lustrous eyes, more colorful garments, more fancifully decorated vehicles, a wonderful sense of rhythm, and charm, charm, charm; unambitious, no, lazy, ignorant, superstitious, uninhibited people, never on time, conspicuously poorer (how could it be otherwise, say the northerners); who for all their poverty and squalor lead enviable lives -- envied, that is, by work-driven, sensually inhibted, less corruptly governed northerners. We are superior to them, say the northerners, clearly superior. We do not shirk our duties or tell lies as a matter of course, we work hard, we are punctual, we keep reliable accounts. But they have more fun than we do ... They caution[ed] themselves as people do who know they are part of a superior culture: we mustn't let ourselves go, mustn't descend to the level of the ... jungle, street, bush, bog, hills, outback (take your pick). For if you start dancing on tables, fanning yourself, feeling sleepy when you pick up a book, developing a sense of rhythm, making love whenever you feel like it -- then you know. The south has got you.

I do not know if he had a name, but I called him North, an appellation I think Beck would have approved of, for it was the name the Dutch called the Hudson River when they first came here, when men set to changing the world in their image, and gave all the wild things their own names.

I am far more fearful of the USA government than I am of North Korea.

The most dangerous thing to the USA population is not North Korea, it is the USA government.

A cold wind was blowing from the north, and it made the trees rustle like living things.

Kashmir, the 86,000-square-mile region in India's north, both is and isn't the India of the popular imagination.

People travel north from Barcelona, not south.

Let whoever wants to, relax in the south,And bask in the garden of paradise.Here is the essence of north_and it's autumnI've chosen as this year's friend.

In the South of England northerners were regarded then as uncouth, brutish, undisciplined savages ...

LIFE IS TOO SHORT TO BE UNHAPPY...SO LAUGH INSANELY, KISS SOFTLY, AND MAKE LOVE PASSIONATELY.....

I am far more fearful of the police than I am of North Korea.

With thousands of years of history frozen in time, it's no wonder that many southerners like me romanticize the north as a place where we can freeze our former selves, thaw, and then bloom anew. Here it__ just you, the land, and your thoughts, and you can't leave until you've wrestled with yourself and emerged a survivor. But then again, the light is much more intense up here and everything looks different because of it. The sun hasn__ set in a couple of months, and you can see things much more clearly when it is light all of the time.

Once upon a time, the Reindeer took a running leap and jumped over the Northern Lights.But he jumped too low, and the long fur of his beautiful flowing tail got singed by the rainbow fires of the aurora.To this day the reindeer has no tail to speak of. But he is too busy pulling the Important Sleigh to notice what is lost. And he certainly doesn__ complain.What's your excuse?

Let me put it this way. Canada is not so much a country as a holding tank filled with the disgruntled progeny of defeated peoples.