1.
The first door stood on the chalky loose gravel trail 100 feet above the Rio Grande River, the heavy weight of the walls of Santa Elena Canyon towering over it, blocky and black-shadowed in the severe moonlight. It was early morning, Sunday, January 29, 2017. The door stood upright, partially open, right across the trail. It was an old door, once painted turquoise, but now weather-worn, mostly a smooth, soft gray with little chips of paint here and there hanging on for dear life. It almost looked purple in the moonlight. A stained green-purple-blue. It was much like the canyon walls--time had worn into its very fabric. Yet very distinct. A beautiful obstruction with an old antique glass handle. No wall was holding it up. Only the frame. It stood as an odd monument to stop the eye from following the chalky white path down into the awesome blackness of the canyon.
There it stood in the moonlight, a boulder and a yucca on its left and the slick silvery slip of the river below. On the right rock-ruble tumbled frozen in place (for now) down the hillside, an almost static slide of atrocity waiting to happen.
A bunny hopped across the trail under the immense silence, the universe poised for something bigger to happen.
2.
An iron door stood at the top of a dune at Monahans Sandhills under that same moonlight. It was rusted and had ship-weight. At eye level, there was small eight-inch window of heavy reinforced glass--something you might see on a prison office door. The door was fastened shut to the iron frame by a heavy chain. As the mind of the writer approached it, he saw the whole thing was anchored to a concrete slab by enormous iron bolts.
The dreaming writer wondered. Anyone could easily walk around the obstruction. The soft sands were rippled lavender-blue in the moonlight. They blew and shifted. There was no guarantee they would always support the awful weight of the door that loomed in the night.
Below the dune and the door was a tent at a campsite. The aluminum shade next to the tent felt like a feather to eye's mind compared to the door on the dune. On the road, next to it, sat a small hatchback car from the 80s. Beyond that, down the small, winding campground road were more picnic shades and a few scattered RV's. One had its interior lights on. You could hear an occasional semi pass on the four-lane. Everything would be peaceful and right if it were not for that door.
But the door remained.
3.
As Central Expressway hummed and rattled with early morning traffic before everything later slowed and clogged when the hot summer sun first pinked the horizon--before this, on a comparatively sleepy straight side street, a door stood in the middle of the road. The dreamer knew the road well. It was Polk Street. The door was polished steel and had big, glass theater light bulbs lining the art deco door frame. The door frame also had two speakers sticking out of the top corners like pig ears. The old type of speakers that look like megaphones. A David Bowie song played:
Transition, transmission
Transition, transmission
Oh my TVC 15, uh oh, TVC 15
Oh my TVC 15, uh oh, TVC 15
Oh my TVC 15, uh oh, TVC 15
Oh my TVC 15, uh oh, TVC 15
The theater lights streamed and blinked with the beat of the music. The cicadas in the big trees that lined the street seemed to join in. As did the horns on the cars that lined both sides of the lane. All the non-human world was singing in their own way:
Transition, transmission (beep-beep, um beep-beep)
Transition, transmission (beep-beep, um beep-beep)
Oh my TVC 15, uh oh, TVC 15
Oh my TVC 15, uh oh, TVC 15
Oh my TVC 15, uh oh, TVC 15
Oh my TVC 15, uh oh, TVC 15
The humans slept oblivious.
Transition, transmission (beep-beep, um beep-beep)
Transition, transmission (beep-beep, um beep-beep)
Oh my TVC 15, uh oh, TVC 15
Oh my TVC 15, uh oh, TVC 15
Oh my TVC 15, uh oh, TVC 15
Oh my TVC 15, uh oh, TVC 15
A door stood on the beach at Sea Rim State Park south of Port Arthur, Texas. The moon was full, the wind oh so warm and sticky, and a line of tropical clouds hung on the horizon ignited by frequent flashes of lightening. Waves rolled in with some intensity, kicked up by the hot hurricane-like wind.
Intensity abounded in the air like electricity.
Fires in rusted oil drums along the beach glowed, circles of beach-party goers circling them, music coming from various audio devices.
Something sad and sulky seemed to lurk just below the sand.
The dreamer realized if the scene weren't from real life, it would be from a B-grade movie. There would soon be lots of screaming as something big, black and unmentionable crawled from the backwater slime unseen behind the beach revelers. There would be panic and running towards the sea.
But, as this was life and not a B-grade movie, the line of fires simply lined the beach mile after mile. The writer walked the beach listening to the laughter and joy--to the music--from a distance. He longed to join them. He wasn't sure it was even possible. He didn't know whether or not he had it in him. A younger version of himself would have pushed forward towards one of those little circles of humanity to find out. He would have been driven by the warm glow of the fire light licking the skin of women in bikinis. He would have wanted pictures. He would have used his camera as an excuse to join the fun. He would have posed as a photographer. He would have wanted alcohol to block out the awful shyness that always kept him at a distance. He would have joined and drank and woke up on the beach the next morning staring at the beak of a buzzard diving in and out of the open flesh of his belly. Yuck. What a terrible way to go down.
Older now, he appreciated the distance. At least a little. Enough to keep him trudging through the soft loose sands of the dunes between the beech and the backwaters. He knew somewhere along this beech there was a lone door standing. He'd seen it before. He just couldn't quite remember the location.
It was an old door, painted navy blue and wind-worn., paint chipped off and weathered wood showing through.
It faced the sea and under the moonlight it was quite beautiful.
He had been there before and seen it.
He had started writing a poem, listening to the constant drum of the sea.
But the distant fires and laughter called to him. He followed. He tried to fit in. The poem was lost but nothing gained.
Older now, he knew that poem had to be written. We are each here for a reason of our choosing but we don't know it. Our earthly yearnings are often but distractions.
He had been called away from that poem, his center.
There are doors one must enter.
5.
Although the fifth door was a bright yellow obstruction on a pathway in Big Thicket National Preserve at high noon, it might as well have been invisible for up a ways on the trail a woman wearing a white tank top and Daisy Dukes crouched down on the holding her dog. She had long, thick black hair and beautiful black almond shaped eyes. There was a dimpled smirk on her face. In front of her a tripod sat just off the path on the leaf-littered forest floor.
Slowly the dreamer noticed the door and the forest, but it took the determination of a writer to see the whole scene. All he really wanted to do was walk over and look down into those big dark eyes and kiss that little dimpled smirk.
But he knew that wasn't what he was there for. He had already dreamed four doors, so the bright, sunflower yellow metal door in the path must be a destination.
"Oh how I'd love to kiss you," he said, simply moving his thoughts from his head to his mouth.
She looked up, her smile widening. "What?"
"I'd love to kiss you, but I can't. It's not why I'm here."
"Really? Well, I'm not here for you either, you know."
"Yeah, I know."
"You do? How can you say that? You don't even know me."
"True, but we all have our own paths."
"I hope so. God knows I'm really searching. Houston is such a sprawling mess. Life just unravels there like a box of compacted springs."
"Yeah, I think it's like that anywhere. You seem pretty focused though for someone so young. Who's the picture for?"
She stood up, holding her dog. "Oh that," she said, pointing to the camera using her lips. (Yep, Native American, he thought.) "I'm working on a post for my blog."
"Oh really."
"Yeah, I'm hoping it leads to something."
"Most things don't, but you never know. Hey, good luck. I got to move on and see what this door is all about."
"Yeah, nice meeting you. You still want that kiss?"
"Oh yeah, but I better check out this door instead."
"Good luck. Some doors open. But not most."
"You can say that again. How did you get through?," he asked, pointing to the door blocking the path. It was clear the ground was permanently squishy on both sides.
"Oh, I just walked around. It's a bit boggy though. Watch for snakes. There's a lot of cotton mouths.
I had to put my walking stick through the head of one of them. The other I flung into the creek with my boot."
It was at that point he noticed her shiny high-topped black hiking boots. They looked so cute against her smooth bare legs.
"Maybe I could take that kiss after all."
She smiled again. "I don't think so. As you said, we each have our own path. You go that way," she said pointing to the door, "and I'll go mine."
And with that she was gone. Vanished.
The door now stood in all its manufactured glory.
A pure yellow form of perfect architecture.
The dreamer hated it, but the writer inside him knew he was there for a reason. A purpose that didn't involve the girl.
Damn.
6.
The sixth door was not really a door but rather the gate in the back hall of the writer's old junior high. That hall led in from the bus ramp. In the writer's dream, the gate hadn't changed. It was just your typical roll down, see-through metal gate, like you see at the malls when the stores are closed. The staff would keep that gate closed until they were ready to let the students in. They waited as long as they could and the dreaming writer didn't blame them.
Yet, strangely the writer wanted in. That had never been true as a kid. Auschwitz was a word that came to mind. His yearning to get past that gate was not too unlike a jew driven to see what happened inside a gas chamber. Overstated? Yes. And he didn't like that. One people's experience with near-genocide should never become easy metaphor to be used by the world for trifling comparisons. Yet Auschwitz was the only word that seemed to label the fear he felt as he stood there in the dream facing what had blotted out a good part of his life.
There was no question about what this door was about--an attempt at recovery. He stood there frozen, a tiger pacing back and fourth across the hall between the gate and himself. It was night. The school was empty. He found himself looking at the awful soda-cracker print tile floor oddly blue under the random florescent lights that remained illuminated for security.
All was silent except the breathing of the pacing
tiger.
That wasn't loud either.
Almost silent.
But not quite.
The writer realized he had the key to the gate in his hand. He was there for a reason.
Fear filled the hall like thick sticky gas. He didn't like the tiger. The eyes that eyed him. The random, pointed snarls jabbing him like the end of a guerrilla man's riffle waking someone up in the middle of the night. But it was not the tiger per se. It was not death per se. He couldn't name it per se. Other than by using the word that felt wrong: Auschwitz. That seemed just about right.
There was some part of him that had been extinguished long ago, and partially resurrected, he was here to pick up the ashes and try to see if he could glue himself back whole.
But how? Fear fingered his throat.
He realized the other five doors were nothing but distractions. They likely had no meaning. Just the dreamer's mind putting off this inevitable moment.
The tiger too was probably an illusion. An excuse. A zone of safety between him and the lock to that gate. But Auschwitz was real. Oh so real.
An awful crowded light angled down through hall thick and dusty from somewhere beyond the gate. He couldn't see its source, but the slowly drifting particles seemed like tiny skeletons randomly tumbling through the universe.
Perhaps this was a tiny bit of a taste of what Christ felt upon that cross. He knew that wasn't true. Hyperbole again. Images. Words. Distractions to avoid the reason he was here facing this gate.
Yet he could not move forward.
He was frozen in space.
Did stalactites and stalagmites dream of escape? Did they stand beneath the constant cold drip growing with each wet fear thinking I better move on before becoming further encased in my own sorry self?
With that thought, the writer woke up. He got out of bed, took a shower, went to his computer, and got to work. He wasn't quite sure how to go about it, but he knew there were doors to open. The blank white space of the Word document stood blankly before him. In his mind he saw one last door, a modernist door, pure minimalism. It stood at the end of a straight, narrow white marble path cantilevered out into the sky somewhere far above the earth--ethereal blue surrounding it. The door was pure white. There was no handle. If there was a space between the door and its frame, he couldn't perceive it. To get through, he would have to blow holes in it. Machine gun the hell out of it. With words. Whatever words came to mind. Until he could walk through.
