It is a warm, sunny winter day in a little snow-covered, country town. A beautifully calm, slim, and middle-aged woman with soft, yet striking aqualine Asian features and long black hair set a poney-tale on one side of her head, is coming out of a small, wooden building with a pagoda roof. She wears light, loose-fitting, traditional pantaloons, sandy brown in color, an orange sweater that zips up to the chin, and slender, velvety grey sport shoes. She carries several books and pamphlets. She looks like a sport instructor. She approaches a small, white car, gets in it, and drives off down the street.

The sun beams warm but strongly through the windshield, from behind the mountain clouds above, over the snow-swept landscape and over the little village, shining right into her mysterious brown eyes. The front seat of the car is warm. As she drives, her cell-phone rings. She picks up the receiver-mic from the seat next to her, places it in her ear while simultaneously pressing the little button on its side, and says ‘yoboseyo?’ Her voice is ever so slightly nasal, surprised, and remotely authoritative, in expectation.

A man’s voice on the other end says ‘good morning Beautiful,’ and remarks about the weather. The woman says, "Eung, it’s warm, isn’ it!" They chat, and she turns into an alleyway that leads to an incline and a group of small shops.

People are out shoveling the snow, lightly dressed despite the season. The icicles have begun to melt from where they hang from the eaves on the houses and the shops. Everything is covered with brilliant, white snow, and it all has that freshly-fallen look to it.

Last night’s storm only ended hours ago, charming those who stayed up late to watch its bales of flakes drift slowly one moment, and cascade dreamily downward the next, from the whitened night sky under the lamplights. The woman and the man on the line had done just that, sipping hot cocoa in front of the one big window of their little house.

By mid-afternoon, the sun has scattered the low lying clouds that usually hover over the lake, making the mountains look misty in the winter mornings. The blaze of the sun does not subtract from the coziness of the scene. The town looks like it belongs on a holiday greeting card, or under a Christmas tree, even as the daylight slowly fades.

. . .

Beyond the town, and in the forest, behind a ring of fir trees, not far from an icy lake a mile or so down the hill from the village border, a warm little brick and log cabin of a house sits in an otherwise richly green wood. The little homestead nestled there is canopied by treetops, above which are the distant and majestic, snow-capped, greenish-blue mountain peaks. One could be forgiven for imagining charming grey puffs of smoke, wafting up from the quiet chimney on the roof of the little house in the woods; the way it used to.

In a clearing behind the house, a man stands with a little girl in the snow. He is teaching her something. He stands behind her, his back bent to accommodate her small size. She is about eight. He crouches over her, with his arms hovering round her, so that his hands are in front of her, cradling her hands. He sets them gently so that her thumbs and straight fingers are at right angles to one another. He’s oriented them so that her right palm faces her, and her left palm faces the horizon; one hand above the other. The thumb of each of her hands meets the pointer-finger of the other, so that there is a frame formed between her hands, and through it, the little girl sees a pleasant picture:

snow-capped hedges and stray branches and leaves at the bottom,

a field of snow and sparse trees just beyond,

the frozen lake after that, just halfway up inside her little hand-frame,

and above the snow field, lie the mountain peaks,

and finally, the beautifully graduated blues, tinged with wispy white clouds, of the winter sky

"The artist sees though windows," the teacher says gently to her. "Everything is framed." As the girl now holdes her hands steadily together in this way on her own, the artist lets go of her and allows her to play, finding new things to frame. She turns around and puts her imaginary ‘frame sites’ on the man. She holds up her arms to capture his face between her fingers. "Wow," she exclaims in a voice of novelty and naivete.

Her teacher, an artist, is pleased, as he realizes she likes it, and he exhales, "Hmmm," in delight. For an instant, he wishes to say that she should keep her frame trained on the scenery, since that is the subject today, but instantly he remembers Han Maum, the One Heart, One Mind Philosophy of the temple monks and the teaching philosophy he and his wife have adopted. It calls for little or no criticism, and a lot of harmony, bringing out the true nature of people, especially students.

"I’m cold, Teacher," says the little student. "Can we go inside now?" The girls says this while turning round to look up at him. The sun had been shining in her eyes during the exercise and she had been squinting, but now turned away from its glow, they widen, revealing their deep brown depth. The teacher is charmed.

"Of course! How about some hot cocoa!" His voice cracks. He talks a lot, even though he teaches drawing and painting.

"You talk funny, Drawing Man!" That was what many townspeople called the him; the artist and teacher who lives outside the town, in the dark forest.

They trudge through the snow to the back door, listening to their feet in the snow, making a light crunching sound under their boots, the surface of it hardening as the day ends and the sky slowly gets darker.