BUILDING

1 1 0 Y B U I L D I N G J O H N K I N S E L L A ‘‘Buildings expanded and collapsed alternately’’ – Henry David Thoreau, Walden, ‘‘The Bean Field’’ The yearly movement around the sun is exemplified in the building and not in the permission to build. The boxes have been ticked but one man’s steady labor has tracked the sun: short days cold to the bone, long hot days strain shade to breathe; perspiration parodies diminishing plenitude of rainwater tank, the zest and immediacy of its contents, not quantity, which is less day by day. Just outside seismic intensity, tremors still touch the hills, the concrete pad: edge of scarp that has you glancing out at what has been and could be, when the sea rises, making an island of house and contemplation. The building has contracted and expanded alternately, bedrooms added, shelves for books, electrical 1 1 1 R connections where there’ll be no electricity. That spark of language that sparked a craving for intensity when intensity is the creature – possum, roo, shingleback – moving slowly past the front door when there is no ‘‘front’’ or ‘‘back,’’ just points of the compass. A greeting, enfilade, vestibule of activity: that door. The din of birds a disruption to the passage of warplanes overhead, training to make a mark, a strike against threats always being determined. ...