Doors are welcoming, forbidding, challenging, simple,
and filled with potential. Well, not the doors themselves. It's what they lead to, or might lead to, or might not. And all those possibilities that lie on the other side of that door, all of them live in your head, occupying the same space at the same time (string theory, anyone?). Because
you just don't know for sure. Of course you could simply turn the handle and find out. However, opening
the door and stepping through stops that activity cold. You have
your one and only answer.
Sometimes it's better to wait a few minutes, sit in imagination, and conjure up the rooms on the other side. This lilac painted door below could open onto an elaborate garden shed filled with shelves of hand-painted pots and trays of herb seedlings, or it might reveal a converted barn, furnished tastefully (if austerely) in minimalist Tuscan.
I wonder how dark this basement-level apartment to the right is. All the light seems to be living outdoors with the plants, huddled against the walls of the subterranean courtyard. I'd guess that the inhabitants might want to spend all their time outside, tending the flower pots, chatting with each other, but there aren't any chairs.
The climbing roses brighten and scent this entry, but the door looks like it would take not just a key but a pretty strong shove to open, resisting all visitors (unless they came bearing cake). And yet, the chair on the right might suggest that the owner likes spending time out front, welcoming company, but it could also say, "Wait here while I consider my options."
I've spent a lot of time behind closed
doors in my life. I like my privacy. I like to feel quiet and safe. I like wandering the halls of my mind, uninterrupted--unless someone is offering cake.
When you've spent years indoors, the out-of-doors can be a bit, well, unnerving because the outside, the stuff on the other-side of your side, is always
changing. Indoors, unless someone likes redecorating, can stay
exactly the same (except for the odd cake crumb). But outdoors changes with the season, time of day, and weather
(a subset of the prior two). Open the door twice, three times, fifty
times, and you'll always be surprised.
Then there are garden doors.
This wooden door on the right looks as strong and almost as forbidding as the one above. Both have brick walls and plants softening the angles with their green curves. But when one knows (or at least has a pretty good hunch) that this door opens onto more of the same, well then, the surprise is always a good one. There might as well be no door at all, as with this archway below.
Garden doors have this advantage; there is no inside and outside. There is only this garden and that garden and the narrow space formed by the arch or doorway to huddle in when it rains.
But my favorite really is the heavy door that stands slightly ajar. There is that moment of expectation experienced from that place of safety and imagination. Possibilities exist, change, and grow, just a step or two away.
Okay. Yes, I know this door is wide open, not "slightly ajar," but I like this photo, and you get the idea.
