Southwestern Doors
by Jane St. Clair

Artists paint pictures of Southwestern doors because they are unlike doorways anywhere else. I think it’s the sun.

The sun is so strong out West that buildings look two-dimensional. As if they were made out of paper. You open them up and you walk into nowhere in particular or just into nowhere.

Southwestern doors are strange and look as if they lead into simple space.

Southwest doors must be passages to something wonderful and interesting. Open them and where do you go? You could go this way, or you could go that way or you could just find yourself somewhere strange.

Southwestern doors can be powerful and mystical and from somewhere very old and long ago.

Southwestern doors can have wild colors so you notice them.

Or they can be hiding so that you discover them unexpectedly.

Even the ones that are for business ….

Even the doors that are for business are magic in the West.

Christopher Morley said if we did not have doors everything would be a hallway.

He said the meaning of a door is to hide what lies inside and to keep the heart in suspense.

“The opening of a door may bring relief: it changes and redistributes human forces. But the closing of doors is far more terrible. It is a confession of finality,” Mr. Morley said.

But I say …

I say … one two three …  Open Sesame.

Open Sesame.

Open Sesame.