Walls & Doors 01

The Poem

I have been making this painting my whole life.Not this one — the one it is about.The one made of every color I survived,every door I didn’t open,every window I meant to closeand left because closing required a decisionI wasn’t ready to make that Tuesdayand Tuesday became the rest of the yearand the window is still openand the air that comes through it is cold sometimes and sometimes notand either way I have gotten used to itand that is either acceptance or avoidanceand I have not decided which.

Some days are dark.The black rectangle at the center is not a wound.It is a door I haven’t tried yet.

A door I haven’t tried yet

I want to be precise about this —the darkness is not absence,not the place where the color failedor the courage ran outor the light declined to arrive —it is the door that is still closed,the specific texture of a surface that has not yet been opened,that has been touched and considered and stood in front ofon the days when everything else was too brightand this was the only honest thing in the room —dark, present, waiting with the patience of a doorthat knows it will be opened eventuallyby the person who built it.

The colors are crude.I said this and I meant it as the highest honesty —not refined, not curated,not the colors of a person who has decided what colors they are and stayed inside them —crude, which means raw,which means arrived at directly from the sourcewithout the filtration of what looks goodor what sellsor what the gallery has decided the market is asking for this season —just the color of the day I was in when I mixed it,just the yellow of a Tuesday that was okay,just the brown of a month I would rather not name,just the pink of a morning that arrived unexpectedly warmand I put it down before it left.

Crude, layered, present

I layer them on top of each other anyway.This is the whole practice. This is the whole life.The dark days and the bright daysand the crude days and the okay daysand the days that were pink in the morning and brown by evening —layered, all of it, on top of each other,the way a life actually accumulates —not sequentially, not the dark first and then the light,but simultaneously, all of it present in the same painting,the same wall, the same doorthat is still closed at the center of all that colorthat is still waiting.

So many doors I have yet to open.I stand in front of them the way I stand in front of the painting —not ready, not unready,just present with the fact of the doorand the fact of my hand that could reach for the handle at any momentand hasn’t yetwhich is not failure and not fear — or not only fear —it is also the specific patience of a personwho has learned that some doors open from the other sideand the waiting is not passivebut a form of readiness that doesn’t announce itself until the door moves.

It is a life puzzle that may never be solved.I say this without grief —the puzzle that cannot be solved is the most interesting puzzle,the one worth returning to every daywith a new color mixed from whatever the day offeredand layering it on top of everything that came beforeand standing back and looking at the accumulationof all the days you survivedand all the doors still waitingand all the windows still openand the black rectangle at the centerthat is also a door that is also the next thingand calling it not solved but alive,

not finished but continuing,not a failure of resolutionbut the evidence of a life still being livedin full color on top of itself on top of itself on top of itself —crude, layered, present,the puzzle that proves by remaining unsolved that you are still in it,

still mixing the color of today,
still standing in front of the door that hasn’t opened yet
with your hand almost on the handle.