Chapter Two Hundred and Eighty: The Practice

In March he sat at the drawing board and thought about the practice.

It was a Saturday. The office was empty — no appointments, no site visits, no letters expected. The March inland light was on the drawing board and the coastal section was still pinned above it alongside the village hall section, the two completed drawings side by side, the coastal school and the village hall in their ink conditions. He had not taken them down. He sat in the Saturday March light and looked at the two sections and thought about the practice.

He thought about how the practice had begun. He thought about the three-generation house — the first commission, the family with the three generations and the specific correspondence of three lives in one building. He thought about sitting at the drawing board before the first section and not knowing how to begin. He thought about the attending visit — the first attending visit, the first time he had gone to the site not to measure but to listen, not to assess but to attend. He thought about the first attending as the practice's founding act: the decision to listen before drawing.

He thought: the practice began with the attending.

He thought about attending across the years. He thought about all the visits — the three-generation house and the library and the community centre and the coastal school and the village hall, the visits that had preceded each drawing. He thought about the pocket notebooks — the twelve years of the pocket notebooks, the attendance recorded in the notebooks across the projects and the seasons and the correspondents. He thought about the accumulated notebooks as the practice's truest archive — not the drawings, not the sections, but the notebooks, the record of the attending before the drawing.

He thought: the notebooks are the practice's most honest drawings.

He thought about honesty. He thought about the honest section as the practice's aspiration — the drawing made from the attending, the inside view, the section that drew what the attending people already knew. He thought about the honest section as the thing that had taken him the longest to understand — that the practice's work was not the invention of new conditions but the recognition of existing ones, not the giving of something new to the attending people but the giving of the right place to what they already had.

He thought: the same but from the right place.

The girl's words. He had been thinking about them since January — the same but from the right place as the definition of the honest correction, the definition of the practice. He thought about the three-generation house and whether it had been the same but from the right place. He thought about the library corner and the community centre and the coastal school. He thought about all of them as the same but from the right place — the three generations given the right rooms for the three lives, the attending child given the right corner for the still attending, the between-time people given the right room for the between-time, the sea children given the right window for the everywhere-at-once.

He thought: every honest section is the same but from the right place.

He thought about the correspondents. He thought about all the people who had written to the practice across the twelve years — the letters and the visits and the telephone calls and the conversations in the lane and the conversations in the classroom and the conversations at the covered approach. He thought about Raymond and Margaret and Catherine and Joseph and Colin and Ellie and Patrick and Claire and the library seven-year-old and the coastal nine-year-old and the two women on the kitchen committee and Frances who had driven seven kilometres from the next village. He thought about all of them as the practice's correspondents — the people who had given the practice its vocabulary, the people whose attendance had been translated into the sections and the buildings.

He thought: the practice belongs to its correspondents.

He thought about what this meant. He thought about the honest section as the drawing made from the correspondents' knowledge — the section that could not have been drawn without the attending visits and the letters and the children's vocabulary and Raymond's thirty years of the between-time and Margaret's eleven years. He thought about the buildings as the correspondents' buildings — the rooms made from what the attending people already knew, given back to them in glass and timber and limestone and the correct sill height.

He thought: the practice draws the rooms. The correspondents make the rooms possible.

He sat with this for a long time. The March light moved across the drawing board as he sat — the morning light becoming the late morning light, the shadows shifting, the day advancing in the March way. He sat and thought about the practice and did not draw.

He thought about what the practice was. He thought about all the ways he had tried to describe it across the twelve years — the attending practice, the correspondence practice, the inside view, the honest section. He thought about Ellie's description: the practice draws into the air what the material will make visible. He thought about the girl's description: the same but from the right place. He thought about Joseph's description, arriving indirectly: the room allowed the children to sort themselves. He thought about Margaret's description, in the first letter, eleven years before: I have been thinking about what the between-time needs. He thought about all of these as descriptions of the practice — the practice described by its correspondents more accurately than the practice had described itself.

He thought: the correspondents have been drawing the practice's section all along.

He thought about the practice's section — the inside view of the practice itself, the honest drawing of what the practice was and what it aspired to and what it had learned. He thought about this section as the section the correspondents had been drawing across twelve years: Ellie in the lined notebook and the girl at the dark window and Raymond at the hatch and Margaret's eleven years and Joseph's two attendings and Catherine's list and the two women on the kitchen committee and all the others. He thought about all of them as the attending persons drawing the section from the inside.

He thought: I have been the witness. They have been the correspondents.

He thought about the witness. He thought about the correct position — the attending witness, the person who held the space in which the attending people could find the rooms. He thought about twelve years of holding the space — the office and the drawing board and the pocket notebooks and the attending visits and the letters and the buildings. He thought about the practice as the holding of the space across twelve years.

He picked up the pocket notebook. He wrote slowly: March Saturday. I practiced for twelve years. The correspondents have been drawing the practice's section all along. Ellie: the practice draws into the air what the material will make visible. The girl: the same but from the right place. Joseph: The room allowed the children to sort themselves. Margaret: I have been thinking about what the between-time needs. These are the sections. I have been the witness. The practice is the correspondence between the attending people and the rooms made from what they already know. The honest section is the inside view of this correspondence.

He looked at what he had written.

He looked at the coastal section and the village hall section on the drawing board. He looked at the pocket notebooks stacked on the shelf — the twelve years of the attending, the accumulated record of the inside view. He looked at the March light on the drawing board and thought about all the correspondents and all the buildings and all the seasons of the attending.

He thought about the next letter. He thought about Catherine writing about the village hall build and Joseph writing about the spring coastal light and Ellie returning to the community centre in its second year and the village hall kitchen person seeing the March field from the south window for the first time. He thought about the next correspondent he had not yet met — the person who would write the first letter about the next building, the person whose attending would begin the next correspondence.

He thought: the correspondence is not finished.

He thought: the correspondence is never finished. The next letter is always waiting.

He thought about this with something that was not quite gladness and not quite anticipation but was both and was also the deep stillness of the practice understanding itself. He thought about the next letter waiting. He thought about the attending not yet attended to, the vocabulary not yet given, the inside view not yet drawn. He thought about the drawing board in the March Saturday light ready for the next first honest line.

He thought: this is the correct condition.

He was glad.

End of Chapter Two Hundred and Eighty