Jason Fried

What remains from the first week of the new year? A memory of Christo and Jeanne-Claude, captured in the New York Times. An article from last year. It tells of the building that contained their shared life—it was not just a residence, but a workshop, an incubator, a starting point. Here they lived, here they worked, here arose those visions that later transformed landscapes for a limited time and brought people to wonder. They spent fifty years there. In this constancy, in this holding onto the familiar, lies something precious: a sanctuary where grand visions could mature and develop. An article that touched me.

Another article, also from the New York Times—a guest essay by Margaret Renkl, a writer I hadn't known until then. Her words did something to me that I can barely describe. They unearthed something that had long been buried. With every word and every sentence, I felt something stirring. First a feeling, then words that quietly attached themselves to the feeling. Sentences formed, one after another, until a small story emerged—nothing momentous, but something true. That's what writing means to me: that in the end a silence arrives, bringing peace. When I finish a text and notice I'm calmer than before—then I know it's right. Margaret Renkl's text triggered that in me.

What else? It had snowed until everything turned white: the terrace, the street, the adjoining forests. Boundaries between Here and There disappeared. The snow lay ankle-deep, soft and inviting, and I did something I hadn't done in a long time—something without reason, without purpose, simply out of joy. I built a snow woman. Or a snow girl—with a skirt instead of spheres, cute in a subtle way that surprised even me. Our landlady christened her Maja. On her last visit, she caught a glimpse through the glass door, and her face lit up.

Once I went for a walk this week. The landscape was white and still beneath a blue sky. The sun shone bright and warm, and although the thermometer showed minus four degrees, I felt only warmth. It felt like summer. I used to hate winter. In the Black Forest, the snow piled up meters high, and I had to shovel it day after day, sometimes three times in a single day when it wouldn't stop snowing. But this winter here? It's brief and unexpected, a gift one hadn't anticipated. This winter makes me happy.

PS: This text is not entirely AI-free. I use an AI as my editor, as I'm convinced my texts are limited in their expression and word choice. Here I use the new technology to free myself from this limitation. I don't yet know if I'm happy about it. I also use the same AI for translating the texts, since my main language is German. Let's see how long I continue doing it this way.