doors

"Always in the long corridors of the psyche
doors are opening and doors are slamming shut"

Marge Piercy from "Song of the Fucked Duck"



friday evening i was hungry and restless with worry. i was caught between my desire to leave because of hunger and my longing to stay where i was...because of this same hunger. i went out...the desire fueled by my hunger won...trumped, as it were, the excuses to stay put...to eat the words of the book that i was reading at that moment. actually, both desires drew a compromise that involved take-out.
waiting, waiting for my food i noticed a woman sitting in a dark corner of the restaurant. i know this woman, not by name but by recognition. she walks. she walks around town most of the time. i have only ever seen her walking so it took me a while to place her in the restaurant because she was sitting.
i heard her get up. i heard her ask the server about time: she wanted to know what time darkness settles in. i tried to answer the question in my mind...to myself and i didn't even know the answer. the server told her something...i think she said 8 but i'm not sure, i was still calculating. what time does it get dark?
my food came up...handed to me in styrofoam and plastic. i paid. i turned to leave and the unfamiliar-now-familiar woman was standing next to me. she knew me. she has seen me around with other people that she's noticed before. i was familiar to her. she wanted to know something so she asked me a question...a question that i could not answer for her...a question that required walking...perhaps even walking in circles. she thanked me for my time. she said goodbye. i went to my car, with very heavy feet and my plastic bag of food, cell phone, and cigs absurdly hanging off of my body--useless ornaments, swinging. she kept walking, the other way. i felt like saying goodbye and i also wanted to tell her that i understood. goodbye is easier but the other understanding is beyond words...it only recognizes.
some say that this woman is a poet...a remarkable poet, a tragic poet. i say that she is a walking poet. others say that she has a psychiatric condition...i say that that assumption is relative...it depends on who is doing the diagnosing and it's usually a doctor who is sitting down in their own dark corner of some dingy restaurant, and who has no idea...no idea at all.
i heard the other day that dreams about houses are pictures of the psyche...i believe that because i believe in basements. i also believe in basements under basements as well. you are in your house you walk downstairs and you realize that the stairs stop. the room under the house is dark, a little cool and there are no windows. most don't see the elevator that leads to a deeper room, cooler and darker. some do...i did (or, rather, still do) but even if they do get further than most and ride the elevator down...still most don't see the door in this basement's basement. it beckons anyway. in a certain kind of silence, you can hear it...like the gentle static sound of snow falling. not only have i seen it, i have had my hand on the doorknob a couple of times, i have even turned it. something tells me, however, that once it is opened and i walk through there is no coming back. the inside of that door has no knob.
so i know the temptation. i know what the walking means. i know this woman and she is brave, to walk between two worlds and yet be unable to distinguish between the two. to only be recognized by the vision of others who have either been at the door or have themselves trampled through. walking makes it better. it eases the pain of the door with no knob slamming shut.