I imagine a space, a clean clear white space like light through ice (clarity and sadness and the round-eyed faces of the seals in Lancaster sound, but this is unfocused, as is the memory of Haibao's white clothes neatly folded by the broken window.) I try to hold that, but everything seems formless. All right, everything is formless, I let it drift, thinking, the building will form. A room unfolds, but it's hard to hold it, hard to concentrate without concentrating. The system has the capacity to hold it for me, just as it holds a building I am studying, but usually I am conscious of the system when I work with it. I am not even aware I have reached into the system's capacity, tapped the system's space.

For an instant I have vertigo, and then a complete lack of perspective. A multiplicity of options, substances to use for walls, shapes in my mind flowing and shifting like ice. Everything becomes mutable, nothing stable, there are no boundaries. I did not know the perimeters of my own mind because I never had any sense that there was any more than my mind but there is a sense of my thoughts fleeing out and out and expanding and I feel as if I am diffusing-

47 seconds. My heart is pounding. The scribble is complex, beautiful, abstract and inhuman. It has nothing to do with building, it has nothing to do with me. I am having a panic attack, my heart is racing, racing. I want to get up, get away, but I don't want to go out. I get up, go into the bedroom, lean on the chairback and take deep breaths, hoping I will calm down.

Deep breath. Hold a second, let it out. Deep breath, hold a second, let it out. I want to talk to someone. I don't want to be alone. My heart won't slow down.

Anxiety attack. What do I know about an anxiety attack? That it is unfocused fear. I sure as hell don't know what I'm afraid of, although I know what started this.

I call Peter, my hands are shaking as I make coffee and wait for the system to put me through. What time is it? The system tells me it is 22:41.

Peter is at work, it's morning in New York. I can't go home for another six months. I close my eyes and try a relaxation exercise (my thoughts skittering like dry leaves.) First, visualize a calm quiet place. But the place I imagine is the night landscape of Borden Station. The long inhumanly white sweep to Lancaster Sound, a black line of open water, and then the deep sky paling slightly at the horizon.

Go to bed. I leave my cup of coffee and crawl into bed behind the white gauzy curtains. It is a bed big enough for two. I leave the lights on, instruct the system to turn them off when I go to sleep and turn them on again if I wake up. I lie there awhile, listening to my heart pound, which makes me nervous, which means that my heartrate doesn't slow (charming little feedback loop) until finally I guess I wear myself out, and eventually, the fear subsides. I close my eyes and painstakingly imagine Peter's living room, his couch. I remember where everything is in relationship to me sleeping on his couch. I am sleeping on his couch. I am thinking about Peter and Engineer Xi. It is morning, and time to put on my red and black and go to work.

I feel normal, a bit tired but in the morning the room is only wearing in it's insistence that I am not back home. I take my latest scribble to Woo Eubong.

She spreads it out on her desk. "It's interesting," she says. "What is it?"

"It's 47 seconds in the system," I say.

"Well, that's something. It's a little like calligraphy," she says.

"Tutorial art," I suggest.

"A little flat," she says. "Too western. Maybe that's the problem, a western mindset."

I do not know if she is joking or not. "Right," I say.

I review jobs, but I am slow because I keep losing concentration. I keep thinking about Chinese calligraphy. Calligraphy emphasizes line, the variation of width and blackness in the stroke, flow. There's a lot of talk about the rhythm of the character. For example, when I write the English word 'talk' I don't cross the 't' until I finish the 'k'. A character is supposed to be a kind of circular movement. I tend, when I finish the 'k' in talk to drag my pen so there's a faint line from the 'k' to the crossbar of the 't'. In calligraphy the faint line is supposed to be implied. It can actually be there, a brush of ink, but whether it is or isn't, there must be a sense of the artist's brush moving in that connected, circular pattern.

I keep thinking about all of this when I am supposed to be checking jobs. Thinking about how calligraphy might be connected with imagining buildings.

Frankly, I don't see any connection at all.

On my fourth Saturday in Wuxi, I go to dinner at Woo Eubong's flat. It's a pretty place, less perfect than the apartment I'm staying in, but more like a home. Woo Eubong has two daughters-official policy is one child, but it's not really so difficult to get permission for a second.

I have spent a few hours in Wuxi, shopping, and finally paid a small fortune for a Wuxi teapot. Made of brown clay, the spout and handle are very realistic looking branches. Mine was made in the second half of the twentieth century, the really valuable ones were made before the Liberation, in feudal China. But it's still an antique. It's tiny and comes with four cups that look as if they actually only hold about a quarter of a cup each. The shopkeeper explains that the teapots used to be stuffed with leaves and the tea brewed was very strong. The four little cups sat in a tray and were filled by being splashed first with tea and then with hot water. The tea, he says, never had a chance to get cold. He wraps them, folding the paper so that he doesn't have to use any adhesive.

It's tiny, if she doesn't like it, at least I made the gesture. And she can put it in a drawer, I'll never know.

I take the bus to the complex where she lives, way out on the edge of town. The buildings are three and four stories tall, and give the impression of careless irregularity, of flow. Tiled roofs jut, balconies look out, roofs are finished as gardens with round moon gates. I look with a more practiced eye. This building was designed by an organic engineer or architect. Woo Eubong?

The gate checks me, opens and I follow my directions back three buildings and then left to the second walkway. There is an archway, as the directions promise, and next to the archway, a child's three wheel gleams as red as the roof tiles.

I climb a ramp, there is a lift, and ask for the second floor. It is so clean, so polished. They must pay to keep it so clean. Woo Eubong's door is blue and before I knock it is opened by a child-maybe four years old? She is sucking on a purple ice lolly and does not speak, only looks up at me.

"Hello," I say.

She regards me seriously and then runs back into the flat, leaving me at the door. She is wearing blue coveralls and yellow shoes.

An older girl with long pigtails peers around the corner. "Mama!" she hollers, "he's here!" She smiles at me, showing missing teeth, and disappears.

A man comes around the corner, tall and fair-skinned. "Engineer Zhang?" he says, "I'm Zhang Chunqing, Eubong's husband. Come in."

The flat smells of food cooking, and from somewhere I hear Woo Eubong saying, "I know he's here, I'll be right out. Go talk to him."

Zhang Chunqing calls, "Girls? Come out here?" He takes my jacket, the girls skid around the corner on the hardwood floor like puppies. "These two worthless daughters are Xiu-ping and Xiu-lin."

The girls giggle madly and take back off for the kitchen.

He sighs, "You will find we are not a very formal household, I'm afraid."

I find it is very hard not to feel at home here. Woo Eubong comes in bringing finger dumplings and sliced vegetables and Zhang Chunqing gets beer. The girls want to watch the vid and are told they can't do it in the front room. They disappear into their bedroom but reappear every fifteen minutes or so to get some snacks and regard me owlishly before breaking into giggles and dashing off to the bedroom. Zhang Chunqing tells me that the older girl, Xiu-ping, is going to a special school where she learns piano and Japanese and we fall into a discussion of the best way to learn a language. Woo Eubong quizzes me on how I learned Mandarin. Chunqing is a biology teacher at a middle school for students who are preparing for University work.