Two years after the 2004 Chuetsu earthquake, I installed a large window and a staircase to view it in Echigo-Tsumari, creating a device that frames the landscape. Initially I imagined a place to offer a place for a moment of private mourning. It is only a staircase of seven steps, but by climbing it one prepares, and by peering through the vernacular window frame and curtain, as though at one's home, I hoped to approach offer an individual experience of that vast rural majestic mountain landscape, and at the same time an intensely personal awareness of time and space. As the curtains sway in the wind, a singular awareness of continuity and duration is generated. Time does not flow monotonously, it ebbs and flows. We may recall past events while simultaneously embracing the world before our eyes in this exact present moment.