One Door Open

Tatami, one lantern, and a single door left open onto the green. A room like this is built to frame one thing and to hold nothing else. Everything worth looking at is outside; everything inside has been quietly carried away so that you will look at it. I sat on the mats in my socks in the late afternoon and understood that I was in the presence of an argument, made centuries ago, in wood and paper, about where beauty is kept. It is the most generous empty room I have ever been let into.