This window is the first thing I see in the morning, I call it my window on life, it alerts me to the outside world, it is a psychic window sometimes, the mirror of a mystic, it suggests the coming day. This morning, the temperature was – 15 degrees, and when I looked up at the window through my groggy consciousness, I sensed the sun rising, it was lighting up the stones and bottles Maria put there, I could see from all the frost how cold it was, I saw the blue sky emerging over the barn.

Life itself, I thought, color and dark, sun and cold, creativity and promise. Life itself.