Latitude of the Interior

There is a latitude that does not appear on maps. It is the angle at which afternoon enters a room and decides the color of plaster.

I live here. The light is not golden; it is exacting. It bleaches what is unsure and gilds nothing that has not already earned a temperature. On the table: an octahedron, a ruler, graphite, a stack of cream sheets that will cockle before evening.

People ask if the work is about the city. The city is about the work. Piers, causeways, the long horizontal of Biscayne, the sudden vertical of a storm. A harbor is a diagram of restraint: water held, then released, then held again.

Interior life has the same grammar. I fold a sheet and the fold becomes a coastline. I look up and the window has already moved the sculpture one face to the left.

To stay is a formal choice. So is leaving a plane unfinished. Both are ways of remaining in relation to weather.