Preface.

The text written last in this way
is the one people meet first.

A text written by someone who has already been through the whole story that follows,
read first by someone who has not yet been through any of it.

On reflection, it is a little strange.

The writer comes back from the end to the beginning and writes.
The reader begins from that text.

For the writer, a preface is a text for coming back,
and for the reader, a preface is a text for going in.

With the same sentences between them, they are in effect facing different directions.

The first reading looks toward what is to come,
and the reading after everything has been seen looks back toward what has passed.

A sentence that first looked like a preview later looks like a reason.

The story entered after reading the preface
and the story entered without reading it are the same.

The sentences are the same,
the scenes are the same,
and the place reached at the end is the same.

A few pages of preface do not directly change the story that follows.

And yet, strangely, it looks different.

It is probably not because reading the preface tells the reader what to look at.

It may be because the reader goes in knowing, just a little, why this story began
and why it follows this particular order.

Some scenes no longer simply pass by,
and some sentences stay a little longer.

A good preface does not explain the work in its place.
Nor does it decide in advance what should be felt.

It is placed in front,
but it does not cover the story behind it.

Rather than making much of its own presence,
it lets what was already there be seen a little more clearly.

A preface is also a text that is often skipped, out of curiosity about the story that follows.

Most people are more curious about the main text than about the preface.

They want to enter the story from the start,
they want to see the real thing rather than an explanation,
and they wonder what comes next before they wonder why it began.

In fact, the story begins even if the preface is not read.

Going straight into the main text with no explanation
may even be a more direct way of meeting the story.

That, too, is probably one way.

But after everything has been seen,
or on coming back to the beginning a long time later,
there is a preface that is read only then.

A text skipped the first time.
A text read but not remembered.
A text that seemed too obvious, or of little meaning, at the time.

Those sentences read differently after everything has been passed through.

Why this story was begun.
Why it was shown in this order.
Why some things were said, and some were left unsaid to the end.

The sentences have not changed.
The reader has only been to the far side of them and back.

The preface did not change the story.
It only let the reader see again what had already been passed.

Sentences read the first time in order to pass through
are read, on returning, in order to stay.

There are times when, only after arriving at the result,
the sentence that should have been read at the start comes into view.

It used to take a long time for something to change.

Between the beginning and the result there was a time of waiting,
and during it a person grew used to the change little by little.

It was possible to watch the change happen,
and to change direction before arriving.

There was also time to think again about whether the goal set at the start was still what was wanted.

Now the distance between the beginning and the result has grown shorter.

It has become possible to decide what to change
and, not long after, to see the change.

That a change long felt to be difficult can now be made a little less difficult is clearly a good thing.

Fast does not mean it is a light matter.
Easy does not mean it can be done without thought.

Only that the result can now arrive first.

And that the faster the result comes,
the easier it has become to pass over what should have been thought about before it.

We usually go straight into the main text of change.

How to begin.
What help to get.
How far to go.
How soon to arrive.

Much is said about how to begin and how to reach the result.

When the result appears, before and after are compared.

Before and after are clear.

But what happened in between cannot be seen at a glance.

What changed first.
What followed a little later.
Whether only what was wanted changed.

The result is seen all at once,
but the changes that produced it may not have happened all at once.

Even while moving in the same direction,
not everything changes at the same speed.

We can decide the result we want.
But we cannot decide the order of every change that happens along the way.

Arriving at the result quickly
does not mean the result has been fully understood, either.

The methods have become faster,
but the speed of understanding change has not become faster with them.

The change arrives first,
and what that change means follows a little later.

What was gained is visible right away,
but what changed along with it may become visible only later.

A fast change sometimes leaves other traces along with the result that was wanted.

Those traces are not easy to see while the change is under way.

They are seen only after everything is over,
when placed side by side with how things were before.

What we want to change, we think about before beginning.

But what we would like to stay unchanged
is sometimes thought about only after everything is over.

Perhaps the faster a result arrives,
the longer the preface it needs before it.

Some changes arrive first as a single number.

A number is clear.

It lets yesterday be compared with today,
and shows the difference between the starting point and the point reached.

It tells how much has changed,
and how far remains to the goal that was set.

The scale is like that, too.

It shows the change across the whole body as a single number.

That single number is clear and convenient.

But a change recorded as a single number does not happen in the body in a single way.

The number says the whole has decreased,
but the mirror says different places have changed in different ways.

There are places that change first,
places that follow a little later,
and places that change before the place I wanted to reduce.

The same change does not arrive at every part of the body at the same time and in the same form.

The scale does not tell that difference.
It only shows every change placed inside a single number.

The age of easy weight loss.

More precisely,
the age in which the result can be reached sooner.

How much to lose,
by when to lose it,
what number to arrive at.

These can now be stated far more specifically than before.

We go straight into the main text of weight loss.

We are curious first about the weight going down,
about the clothing size changing,
about how the body in the mirror will change.

Much is said about how to begin and how to reach the goal.

But less is said than one might expect about what decreases along with it.

Weight loss is a matter of reducing a number,
but a person is not made of numbers alone.

So a change that succeeded on the scale may look a little different in front of the mirror.

The body may have become lighter while the face looks more tired,
and the contour that was wanted may have come with a shadow that was not.

That something decreased is clear,
but what disappeared along with it may be seen only later.

The number is not wrong.
It is only that the number does not say everything.

The face, too, is standing on the scale,
but what the scale shows is only a single number.

A face is not seen simply as large or small.

In a face, there are more relationships than sizes.

Where light rests.
Where shadow forms.
Where lines and planes meet and part.
What impression an expression leads to.

Those small differences together make one face.

A change in one place does not stay only in that place.

When one plane changes, the line beside it looks different,
and when the place where light rested changes, the place where shadow forms changes too.

Yet the face is also the place where change tends to be noticed last.

Because it is seen every day.

Because it is seen so often, change that happens little by little is actually hard to see.

So one day it is noticed all at once.

In a photograph taken after a long while.
In an earlier face not looked at for some time.
In a moment when the same expression as before somehow looks different.

Being noticed late does not mean the change began late.

The number speaks every day in exact units,
but the face speaks in light, shadow and expression.

The number spoke first,
and the face only answered a little later.

Before thinking about how much to lose,
have we ever thought about what may decrease along with it?

While thinking of a body that will become smaller,
have we ever thought, too, of the face that will remain after that change?

While deciding what we want to change,
have we ever decided what we would like to stay unchanged?

A thought understood only after everything is over,
but one that should have been placed at the very beginning.

Not something to reverse after seeing the result,
but something that should have been thought about before arriving at it.

Perhaps weight loss, too, needed a preface.

When we set out to change something,
we think first of the result we want to gain.

But having something we want to change
is different from being fine with everything changing.

As much as we decide what to reduce,
we must also decide what to keep.

The word preservation sometimes sounds like not changing.

Leaving things as they are.
Doing nothing.
Holding something so that it does not move.

But when something is changing quickly,
preservation is different from staying still.

Once change begins, what remains is no longer settled by itself.

Preservation is not a refusal of change.

It is accepting the change that was wanted,
while taking thought so that what need not be lost in the process is not lost along with it.

It is looking, at once, at what should change and what should remain.

Filling after something has disappeared
is different from protecting it before it disappears.

Both deal with change,
but they begin at different times.

One begins after the result has been seen.
The other begins when nothing has changed yet.

To protect something
is also not to disturb, unnecessarily, what one means to keep.

The body answers everything that enters it, each in its own way.

But a larger answer is not a better one.

Sometimes the most precise intervention
is one that does the role required of it without adding unnecessary stimulus to the surrounding tissue.

Especially for a material placed inside the body,
what it does not bring along matters as much as what it carries in.

Leaving only what is needed,
and not bringing along what is not.

Doing what has to be done,
but asking for no more trace than that.

Cleanness does not mean only a clarity that can be seen.

Disturbing the surrounding order as little as possible.
Making no unnecessary noise.

Leaving, in the place where it stayed,
no trace larger than its own presence.

Especially for something placed inside the body,
cleanness is closer to the quiet after it has passed than to how it looked before it went in.

That what went in to protect
does not first disturb what is to be protected.

The place where cleanness meets preservation may be exactly that quiet.

Cleanness is not the result of preservation,
but closer to a condition under which preservation can begin.

Design is often thought of as adding something.

Making a line that was not there,
making a new plane,
adding form and color to make something that looks different from before.

But some design begins with reducing.

Reducing is not simply making less.

It is deciding what matters.

While deciding what to remove,
it is also deciding what must not be removed.

A well-reduced sentence does not mean only a sentence with few words.

A sentence from which the words that could go have been taken out,
and in which the words that must not go have been kept to the end.

Good editing is not the trace of having erased a great deal,
but closer to a state of knowing exactly what should remain.

Reducing the body is perhaps no different.

It is not complete with a smaller number alone,
but when what should remain with that person still remains after the weight loss has passed.

The relation between body and face.
The relation between number and impression.
The relation between what one wants to change and what one wants to keep.

To keep in view the face after the change is over,
from the moment the change begins.

To take the sentence that would be written at the end of weight loss,
and place it before the beginning of weight loss.

If that thought were given a name.

Preface.

A text written after everything is complete,
and placed at the very beginning.

But this time,
it means starting first with the thought that would be learned last.

A design that begins before something disappears, not after,
and decides first what to keep.

Preservation by Design.

Lorient Preface.