This is a personal essay that attempts (essays) to understand my repeated contemplation of two landscape paintings in the wake of a bereavement. I have gathered together into a fragmented narrative thoughts and impressions provoked by the paintings and by readings of poetry (Czeslaw Milosz). fiction (Samuel Beckett) and psychoanalysis (Marion Milner and D. W. https://www.shopnyples.shop/product-category/salt-and-pepper-shakers/