Chapter Two Hundred and Ninety-Four: The City Library Section

He began the city library section in March.

He began it differently than he had begun any previous section. He began not with the wall but with the reader. He drew the reader first — the attending person, the figure at the reading desk, the body in the posture of the deep reading. He drew the figure in pencil at the centre of the cartridge paper before drawing any wall or window or floor.

He had not done this before. The sections had always begun with the building — the floor, the wall, the opening, the attending person placed into the room the drawing was making. He had begun the coastal section with the east wall and the community centre section with the floor and the village hall section with the south wall. He had always begun with the material.

He began the city library section with the person because Thomas had told him the correct order. The room's purpose is the attending. Everything should serve the attending or be invisible to it. The attending person was the section's origin — the room would be drawn around the reader, the walls and the windows found from the attending rather than the attending fitted into the walls and windows.

He thought: the section drawn from the attending person outward is the most honest section.

He drew the reader at the desk. The reading posture — the head inclined toward the page, the eyes at the page level, the hands at the desk surface. He drew the reader's eye level: the horizontal line from the attending eye across the section, the line of the attending gaze. He drew the desk height below the eye level and the page surface at the attending distance.

He thought about what the reader's eye level required. He thought about the attending gaze — the reader looking at the page, the gaze directed downward at the reading angle. He thought about the peripheral view of the reading person: not the page, the peripheral. He thought about what the reading person saw in the peripheral — the desk surface and the neighbouring desks and the floor and the ceiling and the west wall. He thought about the peripheral view as the frame of the attending — the things the reading person did not attend to directly but which held the attending, the context of the deep reading.

He thought: the honest reading room is made of the reader's peripheral.

He drew the peripheral from the reader's position. He drew the cone of peripheral vision — the wide angle from the attending eye, the field of the not-attended-to that surrounded the reading. He drew what fell within the peripheral: the desk surface close, the floor below the desk, the west wall at the peripheral's edge, the ceiling above. He drew the west wall in the peripheral — the lower portion of the west glazing at the peripheral's lower edge, the upper portion above the reader's eye level.

He thought: the peripheral shows where the west light enters the attending. The lower glazing is in the peripheral. The upper glazing is above the peripheral.

He thought about this. He thought about the reader's peripheral and the west wall. He thought about the upper west glazing above the reader's eye level — outside the peripheral, above the attending, visible only if the reader raised their head from the page. He thought about the lower west glazing below the reader's eye level and at the peripheral's edge — present in the attending's frame, visible without lifting the head, in the zone where the light could interrupt.

He thought: the division at eye level is more precise than the division at building line height.

He had drawn the division at building line height from the February visit — the building opposite creating the horizon, the sun dropping to the building line at three o'clock. He thought about the building line and the reader's eye level and whether they were the same height. He looked at the section. He measured. The building line opposite the reading room was approximately at the reader's seated eye level — the city buildings across the street had been built to the height of the sitting attending person, the urban horizon coinciding with the attending gaze.

He thought: the city has built its horizon at the reader's eye level. The building line and the eye level are the same height.

He thought about this coincidence — or not coincidence, the city's accumulated building having arrived at the height of the attending human body, the urban horizon finding the seated eye. He thought about the division in the west glazing as both the building line division and the eye level division — two different principles arriving at the same height, the correct height confirmed by both.

He drew the division line in pencil across the west wall at eye level. The upper glazing above — the sky, the morning, the light above the peripheral. The lower glazing below — the afternoon directional light in the peripheral zone, the zone requiring the diffusing glass.

He drew the floor. The city library stone floor — not the timber floor of the village hall with its worn centre, the stone floor that held the city's use without marking it individually. He drew the stone as the floor of the urban attending — the floor for the many, the floor that had received generations of readers without showing the individual paths, the floor honest in the urban way.

He drew the ceiling. The generous ceiling — the reading room height that the serious attending seemed to require. He thought about the ceiling height as the city section's unique element: the coastal classroom had the lower corner ceiling and the community centre had the ceiling that breathed and the village hall had the ceiling that received the managed south light. The city library had the generous ceiling — the ceiling that gave the attending person room above their attending, the ceiling that did not press.

He thought: each honest room has its own ceiling. The ceiling is the room's most personal element.

He drew for the full morning. The city library section emerging in pencil around the central figure of the reader — the walls and the glazing and the floor and the ceiling found from the attending person's position rather than the attending person fitted into the constructed room. He drew the double doors and the threshold between the circulation space and the reading room. He drew the desk positions — not all fourteen, the principle of the desk positions, the freedom of distribution that the correct afternoon light would allow.

He drew the three who stayed. He drew three figures at three eastern desks in the afternoon sun — the three who stayed in the wrong condition. He drew them and thought about the corrected reading room and the three who stayed in the corrected condition. He thought about the three who stayed needing to stay not because their need was greater than their discomfort but because the room was now the room that held their attending. He thought about the three figures at the eastern desks as the section's most important figures — the faithful attending, the readers the honest room was most built for.

He thought: the honest room is built first for the faithful attending.

He looked at the pencil section at midday. The city library in section — the reader at the desk and the west wall divided at eye level and the diffusing lower glazing and the stone floor and the generous ceiling and the double door threshold and the three faithful readers at the eastern desks. The section drawn outward from the attending person.

He thought about writing to Thomas. He thought about sending the pencil drawing in the post — the scan, the email, the correspondence by digital means. He thought about the letter. He thought: Thomas's attending has been patient for eleven years. The correspondence should arrive by post.

He photographed the pencil section and printed it and folded it into an envelope. He wrote: the section is in pencil. I have begun with the reader rather than with the wall — the room drawn from the attending person outward. The west glazing is divided at the reader's eye level, which is also the building line height: the city has built its horizon at the seated attending person's eye. The honest room was in the city's geometry all along. The ink waits for your confirmation. Tell me if I have attended correctly.

He wrote in the pocket notebook: city library section begun in March. The reader drawn first — the section drawn from the attending person outward, the most honest section. The west glazing divided at eye level: the building line and the eye level coincide, the city's geometry confirming the correction. The ceiling as the room's most personal element — each honest room has its own. The three faithful readers drawn at the eastern desks: the honest room is built first for the faithful attending. Pencil section sent to Thomas. Ink waiting for confirmation.

He looked at the copy of the pencil section pinned above the drawing board — the reader at the centre, the room around them, the west wall with the division line, the three faithful readers at the eastern desks.

He thought: the section drawn from the attending person is the practice's most complete section.

He thought: Thomas will confirm it. The ink will follow. The correspondence continues.

He was glad.

End of Chapter Two Hundred and Ninety-Four