It was a warm, spring day, and the sun reflected brightly off the tall skyscrapers and glass windows, filling the busy city with an unexpected air of pleasure. Normally, the city was sullen and gloomy, but today, there was something in the air that made strangers strike up conversations with each other, people hold doors for the ones behind them, and passerby exchange quick smiles.
         In a small café conveniently located between two large companies, four friends (two men and two women) sat clustered around a table inside. The thick smell of coffee and snacks, along with the murmuring of the people inside, created a comfortable atmosphere on this already marvelous April morning.
         It started with the artist saying, “So, how’s everyone doing?” He was a tall, thin man with quick, brown eyes that observed everything around him, his thin fingers always ready to start drawing anything that interested him. Although he had worn an apron for the painting he started earlier that day, a smudge of chalk was streaked on the sleeve of his black sweater.
         The writer shrugged. She wore purple glasses, and today her blond hair was pulled up into a loose bun with a sparkly blue clip. She crossed her legs, rustling her gray skirt, and fingered the straw in her cup.
         The musician had been listening to the song that was being played in the café, a soft, soothing melody written by a country music star in the 80’s, but at the artist’s words, he straightened up, drumming his fingers on the table. His fingers weren’t very long, but most people were surprised how quickly they flew across the strings on the violin, cello, or harp.
         “Can’t say,” he answered the artist, sounding gloomy.
         “Why not?” the photographer replied, putting down the mug of coffee she had been taking a sip of. She had curly, black hair cut short, and a camera strap hung around her thin neck.
         He shrugged, and meanwhile, the artist sighed. “I know what you mean,” he told the musician. “It’s very hard.”
         “Your jobs?” The photographer asked.
         The musician, artist, and writer nodded in agreement.
         “What’s so hard about it?”
         The artist immediately told everyone his troubles, having created a lot when he tried to paint the lake by the barber’s shop an hour ago.
         “You see,” he started, “This morning at 9 o’clock, when I woke up, I pulled open the shades and looked outside. It was a beautiful morning. Beautiful. The sun hadn’t been shining like that since last month, it’s been so cloudy recently.”
         Everyone at the table nodded with agreement.
         The artist sighed again. “I was dying to draw today. So I quickly changed and went to my studio in Building 394, you know, the one behind the bakery” – nods again from everyone around the table again --- “picked up some supplies, and went out to the lake. I set up everything, picked up my pencil, and began sketching the outline.
         “Everything was going along great, until I had finished sketching. I looked back at my work so far, and well, it wasn’t so great anymore.”
         “Did you mess up on the perspective?” The writer asked sympathetically. “I remember in high school drawing class, that was the hardest for me.”
         “I bet it was the trees,” the musician said. He had known him the longest. “You always complained how leaves were so detailed and hard to draw precisely.”
         But the artist shook his head to both guesses, and surprised them with his answer.
         “It just didn’t have the feeling of today.”
         Everyone stared at him. Finally, the writer said, “Feeling, as in…the mood? Like, how today feels wonderful? Did you picture not have that ‘wonderful’ quality in it?”
         The artist nodded, while the photographer exclaimed, “But of course not! You hadn’t even started adding the colors yet!”
         The artist explained, “But even after I added the colors, it still didn’t look right. I’ll admit, it did look realistic, but it didn’t have that feeling of today in it.” Nodding his head towards the writer, he said, “She understands.”
         “But of course I do,” she exclaimed. “I have that exact trouble. I’m writing a story about a girl who’s been an orphan since birth, and since she’s looking for a place where she belongs, I was going to make her stand in the city she’s in, thinking about her life.” The writer took a sip of tea. “Then, as I sat on the balcony earlier this morning, I had an idea. In the midst of her sadness, I was going to make her think about how wonderful the day was, like today, and find something to live for.  I really wanted to capture that feeling I got when I stepped out of the apartment building. That feeling of just…I don’t know. There’s no way to describe it.”
         There was a silence around the table, then the musician said, “Hey, that’s kind of like my problem. I was hired just last week to write a song to match the new movie (that nobody’s supposed to know about yet, so shhhh). It’s a modern love story, if you want to call it that, and I have to compose music to the scene where the man first sees his girl for the first time. She’s standing at the bus stop, looking kind of lonely, and he falls in love with her. But how are you supposed to compose to that? I don’t think you have the problem of capturing the feeling,” he told the writer. “You just have to write words. Then, if your story turns into a movie, it’s the musician who writes the songs that has the problems. I mean, how am I supposed to get that melody? That awful melody that I just can’t think of. I’m not sure if it even can even be composed. Can music really describe how one feels when they fall in love? Every single emotion swirling in you?” He fell silent now too, either thinking about the melody that didn’t exist, or about the first time he saw his girl, who he hadn’t married yet, but was planning to soon.
         The writer suggested, “Maybe you should try listening to some Tchaikovsky or Chopin…I mean, they wrote pretty deep love music. Maybe you’ll have a strike of inspiration that wasn’t there before.”
         But the musician just sullenly shook his head. “Their music just doesn’t match,” he insisted. “It doesn’t match the modern love story, and although I think their songs came close to that love feeling of the past, it couldn’t have exactly described that true feeling. And plus, modern love is different from the love of the past. It’s not as intense…or maybe it’s more intense… or….it’s just different, okay?”
         The writer said, “I told you it’s hard to think up words for things.” Meanwhile, the artist beside her sighed again.
         “Look, I think you two are doing fine,” he said. “I mean, writing and composing? C’mon, it’s not as hard as drawing. In writing, there’s a certain style to make the reader feel a certain way. In composing music, there’s minor and major, and that’s all there is to it to making the listener feel a certain way. But painting? You’re not taught those things. You just have to look at what you’re drawing, and use your common sense to capture the mood.”
         The photographer had not spoken in a long time, and now she did. “I disagree,” she said. “I think it’s me that has it hard. In photography, you don’t even have a chance to make it right. You just angle the camera, and click the button. It doesn’t matter how good your camera is; sometimes you just can’t photograph the feeling you get when you look at a scene.”
         Someone at the table suggested using Photoshop, but the photographer just rolled her eyes. “No, that’s not the point,” she replied, somewhat edgily. “To real photographers, photography is supposed to capture the truth. Sure, Photoshop can make things look better, but it’s not the truth, and it really doesn’t help in capturing the feeling, if you want to know.”
         Nobody had anything to say anymore. All of them felt as if their words, paintings, music, or photographs could never capture the truth of the world. And that was the trouble that bothered them, on that wonderful, bright, sunny day.