Chapter Two Hundred and Ninety-Three: Thomas's Letter

He wrote to Thomas from the train on the way home from the February visit.

He had not planned to write on the train — the practice wrote its letters at the drawing board, the letter composed in the same attention as the section. But the February visit had given him something he needed to give back immediately, before the train reached the fields and the city light was replaced by the inland light and the reading room began to feel like a memory rather than a present attending.

He wrote in the pocket notebook first: the principle found. West wall divided at the building line height. Upper glazing clear — the sky and the morning preserved. Lower glazing diffusing — the afternoon directional light received and dispersed. The three who always stay no longer struggling. The morning and the afternoon held in the same wall.

Then he wrote the letter on the train.

He wrote to Thomas: I have found the correction. The west wall is divided at the height of the building line opposite — the buildings across the street create the horizon and the correction follows the horizon. Above the building line the glazing is clear: the sky, the morning, the best condition preserved. Below the building line the glazing is diffusing: the afternoon directional light received and scattered across the reading room as even light. The pages will be readable at three o'clock. The three who stay will not struggle. The morning west wall desk will remain the best desk in the room through the afternoon.

He sent the letter from the station when the train arrived.

Thomas's reply came four days later. He read it at the drawing board on a Tuesday morning in the late February light — the February light that was beginning to lengthen, the days adding minutes, the winter approaching its turning.

Thomas wrote: I read your letter standing at the west wall of the reading room at three o'clock on a Friday. I read it with the afternoon sun on the pages. I read about the diffusing lower glazing while the afternoon sun was making the pages difficult to read and I held the letter at the angle that reduced the glare and I thought: this is what it would not be.

He thought about Thomas reading the letter about the correction while experiencing the condition the correction would address. He thought about the letter held at the angle that reduced the glare — the body already performing the correction with the letter, the hand doing what the diffusing glass would do, the attending person improvising the honest window with the sheet of paper in their hand.

He thought: Thomas held the letter the way the diffusing glass will hold the light.

Thomas wrote more. He wrote that after reading the letter he had put it down on the reading desk and sat in the afternoon sun for ten minutes without shielding the pages. He wrote that he had let the afternoon light fall on the empty desk surface and watched the light on the stone — the city afternoon light lying across the reading room's stone floor, the directional light from between the buildings travelling across the floor to the east wall. He wrote: I watched the light travel. The directional city light moves across the floor in the afternoon. It is not still like the coastal light. It arrives from between the buildings and it moves as the sun moves and it crosses the floor in a line that shifts. I have been watching this for eleven years without understanding it as a moving thing.

He thought about the directional city light moving across the floor. He thought about the coastal light — the everywhere-at-once, the dispersed light, the light without direction that arrived in the room and stayed. He thought about the city light moving — the sun finding the gap between the buildings and entering the reading room in a directed band that crossed the floor as the sun moved in the afternoon sky. He thought about the difference: the coastal light was a condition and the city light was an event. The coastal light arrived and held. The city light arrived and moved.

He thought: the coastal light is a condition. The city light is an event.

He thought about this distinction. He thought about the section drawing the condition — the coastal east window drawing the everywhere-at-once as the room's constant condition, the diffuse light present always, the wide low opening receiving the light that did not move. He thought about the city section drawing the event — the diffusing lower glazing managing the afternoon light as it moved, the diffusing glass receiving the shifting directional light and making it the room's even light regardless of where in the afternoon's progression the sun had arrived.

He thought: the coastal section draws the receiving of a condition. The city section draws the managing of an event.

Thomas wrote at the end of his letter about what he needed from the correction. He wrote about the reading room not as a room with a light problem but as a room with an attending problem — the light problem as the symptom, the attending problem as the condition. He wrote: what the reading room needs is not better light. What the reading room needs is the light that does not interrupt the attending. The attending is the room's purpose. Everything in the room should serve the attending or be invisible to it. The afternoon west light does not serve the attending. The afternoon west light interrupts it. The correction must make the light invisible to the attending — present but not demanding, there but not insisting.

He thought about the light invisible to the attending. He thought about the peripheral field in Raymond's community centre kitchen — the field not demanding, not competing, waiting at the edge of the attending until the person at the counter was ready to receive it. He thought about the diffusing lower glazing as the glass that made the afternoon city light invisible to the attending — present in the room, providing illumination, but not demanding the reader's attention, not insisting on its direction, not making the pages unreadable.

He thought: the honest window makes the light invisible to the attending it holds.

He thought about this as the practice's newest finding — the finding that Thomas had given by describing what the reading room needed in the language of the attending rather than the language of the light. He thought about the light invisible to the attending as the goal of the honest window — not the correct light for the aesthetics, not the beautiful light for the architectural photograph, but the light that served the attending and was otherwise invisible, the light that did not interrupt.

He thought: the honest window does not ask to be noticed. The honest window asks to be used.

He wrote to Thomas that afternoon. He wrote: the light invisible to the attending — this is the correct description of what the honest window does. The coastal east window makes the everywhere-at-once invisible to the sea children's attending by giving it to them at the correct height without asking them to reach for it. The diffusing lower glazing makes the afternoon city light invisible to the readers' attending by receiving it and distributing it without the direction that interrupts. The honest window is always the window that serves the attending without asking the attending to serve it.

He wrote in the pocket notebook: Thomas's letter. The letter held at the angle that reduced the glare — the body performing the correction. The directional city light moves across the floor: the city light is an event, the coastal light is a condition. The section for the condition draws the receiving. The section for the event draws the managing. Thomas: what the reading room needs is the light that does not interrupt the attending. The honest window makes the light invisible to the attending it holds. The honest window does not ask to be noticed. The honest window asks to be used.

He pinned the letter beside the drawing board. He looked at it and thought about the section not yet begun — the first honest lines of the city library section not yet drawn. He thought about the principle found across two visits and two letters. He thought about the pencil.

He was glad.

End of Chapter Two Hundred and Ninety-Three