The Landscape of Emotion

René Magritte and I share a good cry over les temps perdus.

For twenty years I sat in a favorite spot in my former home, in Pennsylvania, next to a big kitchen window overlooking our backyard and the woods beyond. From that vantage point I watched the landscape go through the transformations of spring, summer, fall, and winter. I also enjoyed the subtle shifts from dawn to full morning, from afternoon glare to softer sunset, from snowstorm to thaw to spring green. From that window I watched the seasonal birds come and go, children grow up and then run off to NYC and Denver, and my own father play with those grandkids and then disappear from the scene forever.

When my wife and I decided to leave that house for points west, I especially savored the dwindling moments I had to sit in that kitchen window and say goodbye to a peaceful perspective I enjoyed for a broad swath of my adult life. Through the usual turbulence of career and family, my perspective remained steady. The view was never quite the same twice, and there were astonishments of ligh…