Our Species Stole Winter

And there, Twenty Twenty-Four bites the dust.

Let me bite my silence.

Over the Town, Marc Chagall

A quarter of a century is a good slice of time for a symbolic animal. We may bite and taste its flavours. We are a quarter century in the twenty-first and our species stole the winter. Istanbul is not having winter… or this is its winter now. I am shaking my head in disbelief and as a protest I am wearing my winter hats and clothes, and refusing to warm my home. I keep staring at my long shadow and sigh, where is winter? where is cold? why am I sweating? Stolen winter is one of the whispers and themes of my winter solstice. These days, my winter child self’s longing is lengthening with the hard truth of a warming planet. Winter, I love you, please come back already. 제발. Will you come if I get myself a pair of mittens? Shall I? If only I knew how to knit it, I would begin knitting…

In 2024, from summer to winter, I turned some imagination dust into a written story.¹ In the depth of summer, I was writing a story that was taking place in winter. Now, the French translation is almost over, the book has a name and a beautiful cover, as well as a timeline for publishing. Pre-sale is in February, printing in March and my first eco-fantasy book will be published in April. It is quite surreal. Just like not having a winter in Istanbul. I am all sorts of troubled. I must winter. We must winter.

Winter is dreaming time, freezing time, reflecting time, contemplating time, rooting time, hibernating time, surviving time, gathering resources time, snow time, vulnerability time, silence time, tending time, respecting time, protecting time, cocooning time, longing time, deepening time…

Winter teaches us what it means to live on a planet and to be a planetary being. Also in the 21st century, winter might be teaching us the consequences of being a species that disregards and disrespects their planet and its natural cycles. During this time of the year, what matters most becomes our host and defines our space and time. What we protect, what we surrender, what we are responsible for and what we value become clear. In winter, we cannot be bothered with what does not matter; we do not have energy for it.

In a way, by stealing winter, we are stealing all these precious times and experiences. And for many of us those times are long stolen by consumerist, capitalist system and trapped inside a clock that keeps striking the collapse of climate, extinction of species, overconsumption, greed, rush, inequality, supremacy, colonialism, destruction and massacres… The lack of winter and its symbolic meaning, alongside with autumn and its symbolism is one of the biggest troubles of our times. We are imprisoned inside a system that fancies to spring and summer all the time, and it exhausts us all. It is not sustainable.

We must reconnect with the deep inner knowing that relationship with time is a gift that regenerates, matures and enchants us and our lives. And only by being relational we can free time from the control of patriarchal and colonial forces that have been driving our human world for thousands of years. When I build fantasy worlds, one of the first things I do is to define the relationship people have with time. When I create a patriarchal world, I make sure is that the time is controlled, trapped and tamed in a certain way that generates whatever that patriarchal power wishes. Centuries, years, months, days, hours, minutes, seasons; can be beautiful relational time-beings but they can also be means to colonise time and realise a certain kind of human-centric reality. How we keep time and how we are kept by it plays an important part in the world we are creating.

At the end of each cycle, I try to find ways to relate with the time that made itself known, lived and passed. Some years ago, I began imagining time turning into soil and dust with winter solstice or calendar year if you find it easier. So I spend a bit of time with time. I contemplate on what, who, where, when had relationships with me, and what, who, where, when I had relationships with. Then I take a piece of paper to draw, paint and write parts of my year and imagine that it becomes my time soil. This way I can keep it somewhere, like inside my agenda. For example, my 2025 agenda has the time soil of 2024 on its last pages and my 2024 had the time soil of 2023.

Soil is planetary. It is the matter. Dust is cosmic. It is the imagination, the mystery.

Soil becomes what I work and sculpt with, what I am worked and sculpted with. Dust is what I dream and dance with, what I am dreamt and danced with.

For most of my life, I tended to have less soil and more dust… Last year was a bit of an exception that made good soil by making me face again and again the realities of life, by generating some income and resources, by writing an eco-fantasy book, by inking shapes, by repairing relations, by respecting, by learning from and apprenticing to Korean storytellers… Dust is fantastic² but so is the soil. And I am excited to be making my own kind of soil in the years to come and very grateful to people who teach me how to make soil and how to work with matter in a relational manner.

Now, Twenty Twenty-Five is almost three days old, and filled possibilities and impossibilities. I wish us good luck and deep patience in our efforts and participation to become more planetary, more responsible, more creative, more relational, more reciprocal and diverse beings, cultures and communities.

I love you, planet. I love you, winter. And I miss you… both.

Gizem Gizegen, 2025 Istanbul, ☉ Capricorn ☽ Aquarius

1. Here it is if you wish to read my writing journey:

2. And it can get really fantastic for some of us… as a fantasy writer, I have my own share of troubles with this. It’s a precious yet complicated gift.