On the day we left for good, it was Winter Solstice, the best light of the year. When I came in that morning, the window light was touching the far wall. I photographed it at about 10:10, when the light from the east just happened to be centered on the well-worn floor. I went outside and photographed the building from every angle as if by doing so I’d take it with me.
“This loft has beautiful light,” my neighbor down the hall commented. I thought back to the first thing he ever said to me. The loft has beautiful light. Every day for ten years, each time I opened that door in the morning and found that empty space flooded by sunlight ready for me to transform it into something great because I was so fortunate to have it, I felt that beautiful light.
I looked around for one last time. The light streamed absolutely parallel down the length of the loft. I left at 2:20, the exact time of the winter solstice, I heard later on the news.
That sun in the studio—stripes of pure bright even light, straight through the south windows and up the 80 foot length of the open loft touching where my desk used to be. I’ll never forget that blazing sun. I could have left after the sun went down, to experience once more the light in its full cycle, reaching and embracing its way around the large empty space, then settling in the strange orange spectrum of sodium vapor street lamps that came on so early that time of year. I could have bathed in golden darkness one last time. But I left at the moment of Winter Solstice. I left my studio glowing at the best moment on the best day of the year.
