“The winter sun shows how soon the light fades from the ash, how soon night enfolds us.” —W.B. Sebald, The Rings of Saturn

In Herzog’s Nosferatu, Count Dracula says, “I don’t attach importance to sunshine anymore.” That’s me now. The sun up here in The North, if it comes out at all, it lights up your eyeballs, maybe, gives your spirit a moment of novelty, but it doesn’t warm you in your core. I ask the locals some more polite version of, “How do you people live like this?” and they answer, “Large doses of Vitamin D.” (And plane tickets to sunny places like the one I left behind.)