When I moved back to Australia from Japan in 2008 one of the reasons that I gave was that ‘I want to live somewhere where I can have a garden.’ 5 years later and two apartments later I finally got there: out in Macleod (which is really just an outer part of Melbourne, despite what the GPS says).

And the garden, great as it is — came with a rather large house, at least one room of which, I am certain, is larger than my Tokyo apartment. A house which, though we’ve been there for 6 months now, I keep noticing new things about — one of them being the way that the rooms are laid out such that the lines of the walls and ceiling seem to converge on open doors. There is an angle at which you can stand at the front of the house and see all the way though into the back room.

That’s my wife visible through the doorway in the distance, lit by a lamp. If I were to take the same picture first thing on a summer’s day she would be lit by a shaft of light from the morning sun, which rises at just the right point to shine through the front windows, past the dining table, and through that same back-room door.