FIRST LEARNED of from the owner of a bookstore in the Treviso Province of Italy several years ago, and I still think about it every winter as the daylight gets trimmed at both ends, with the dark crescents of the swifts long since gone and the on the north side, the side that knows it’s in shadow. To dwell in the dark is often to dwell with anxiety, or stress, to only be able to look out with half-closed eyes. It becomes easy to believe that this is just how things are going to be from now on.
