"What I want is a view. I want a window where I can see a tree, or even water." "Memory, Agent Starling, is what I have instead of a view." - Hannibal Lecter in 'Silence of the Lambs'

He was obsessed with a certain view. Only in this case he was looking inwards into a room with a table set under a dormer window, right in the middle of a beam of light.

There were two of them sitting there, at the table, reading, and when in their books they came upon a line of beauty, noting it down in leather bound notebooks with yellowing paper.

The smell of ink and paper, the light of afternoons turning into evenings, occasional squeak of a chair scraping against the wooden floor, the hymn of easy breathing.

He saw this as clearly as he sees himself every morning in front of the bathroom mirror shaving, i.e., he saw, and perhaps continues to see only what he wants to see.

The stray white hairs, the high dome of a balding forehead, lines around the mouth, the faint hint of a double chin, the belly that is flabby, the threads of time in other words.

Towards these a certain form willful blindness. The eye sees, and saw only the eye, his and the other’s. And eyes are usually clear chambers of light, rarely dark except in sleep or under conditions of loss.

One of them blinked. That was all it took for this loss to occur. Remember the game children play, the outstare game, where one refuses to blink even as eyes become watery graves.

And then a tsunami in minor scale. And then the disappearance of the tree in the sea. And then even the disappearance of the sea. Memory is what he has instead of a view. Memory was, actually, what he always had.