My sons sitting in a sunlit window, a few days before I write these words, the first really cool day of the year. A half-eaten banana in the older boy's hand, the little one looking up at his brother with--what? A new expression, maybe a new feeling?  One not quite like any I'd seen before. Both boys wonderfully themselves, wonderfully unaware of their father and his camera.

One day, all this will be nothing but memory. This is the sadness of photography, that it reminds us of this fact, even before moment is over. The click of the shutter is the snick of a lock, a door closed forever.

What else is there? Outside the window, a blurred mass of trees, a high-rise construction project. Inside, was there music? A stray fly buzzing? A lingering smell of eggs from breakfast? I can't say; it's gone already.

Very soon, all this will be nothing but memory. And later, not even memory. My wife was out that day, in class. My sons won't remember. They're too young, and, even if they were older, there's no reason. It's not a birthday, a wedding, a funeral, a tragedy or a celebration. Just a day like any other, a banana like any other, a typical morning in early autumn in Taipei. When I and my memory are gone at last, there will be only this image, this surface, indecipherable even to the boys it pictures.

It's not that I will die--everyone dies-- but that this particular moment, this exact sunlight, this unexpected cool air, this moment in the life of these boys, that all this  should die with me-- that's what is unbearable. And so I go on shooting photos. What else can I do?