A House of Quiet Light

To you, in the house of quiet light,

Welcome to the Storm Post Office. This letter comes from a small white house in Vienna, January 1914: pale blue-gray linen, a hand-drawn title in the geometric manner of the Wiener Werkstätte with squared-off counters, bands of black and white checkerboard, a small laurel and an engraved white facade, a sage-green clinic index tag, and one restrained ocher medallion. In this house, light does not raise its voice.

Goethe put light and the eye into two lines: "If the eye were not sun-like, it could never behold the sun." — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Zahme Xenien (1827)

Stay a while and grow an eye that can see the light. There is no hurry. When you want to write, we will leave a lamp on.

A lamp left on for you,

Storm Post Office

January 1914 · Vienna