Sun streams through the window, the cheerful, basking sun of early spring. We’ve got nowhere to be, so we sit together in a bakery with a steaming mug of tea, a warm bottle of milk and a slice of banana bread to share. We get kissed by two basset hounds and a golden retriever. We go rock-hunting on the beach (they taste salty: we checked), and our feet get wet from stomping in the slop at low tide. A banner day. A day during which shoe-bombers and land mines and faraway horrors do not exist. Restoration for the news-weary soul.

In case you haven’t had a day like that lately, go here with your headphones on and the volume turned up. On a ‘time-to-go-live-in-the-woods’ day, when your emotional arteries are clogged. And you might think, like I did: somehow, someday, we’re going to get through to each other. How can we be so creative, so joyful, and not figure it out?