The Door

I walk along these Halls and I think about how untarnished these little Birds and Statues and oddities are; they are all each consumed in their own Fantasies, vying for a lovely Lime-Green Berry when there’s a Bloodred one up much higher. I think about the true nature of Man and if Valor was a real trait, if People were not so shallow-minded and instead gave out gentleness like the lapping Waves of the Sea. I think about my own seemingly crushing troubles, and cannot realize that my troubles are large and looming because I made them so. Because I, too, am part of Mankind, and Man is simply prone to such ignorances. 

I gaze at the Doors and am sharply arrested with a broad understanding that the Doors are all one, they are the same, utterly indistinguishable if not for the faint brushing-aways of scattered Dust. And now I am staring at the petal-like markings, wondering what sort of Fingertips -- and with them, People -- have passed through these lonely Halls before. Was there perhaps a Princess, weeping solemnly, as she had to leave her poor lover to the vicious Crests of silver Helmets with dusk Plumes? Ah, it may be that she also had a grand white Steed, seventeen Hands high, that had balked at the desolation of it all and tore away. I would not blame the Horse. Here, nothing resides except austerity and the faint smell of drying Masonry. All of our past Ingenuity, Creative Mindedness, has leached out of the Structures. Without Color or goal, the place has fallen far from its past Glamour. 

Now, I am imagining the Labyrinth as a House of Festivity. It is an arduous task, for I can no longer recall many of the past aspects that gave something Life. Trying to remember is like plunging one’s Hands into a Bowl holding opaque Liquid, only to find that the Bowl is shallower than one had first thought, knuckles knocking harshly against brittle Marble. I bite my right cheek in discontent, then straighten up and start to brush away the still grey Dust from its Ledge-Thrones. ‘This is how you shall become committed to eroding away Time,' I command my palms. They are my Servants, but sometimes I feel that my Mind slips away, ahead of the rest of my Body. It is disconcerting and I hate it. When it happens, it is like I am watching the Spool of my sanity unwind, unwind, Thread being gobbled up by Madness. 

This time, it seems that my Body is, instead, running ahead of my Mind. I have already cleared a large patch of the curved Ledge close to the Door I am standing at. I barely think to spare it a glance before moving over once more, yet suddenly a Spearhead of Light shoots towards the Wall from the open Window. It dissolves into a rectangle of daisy-yellow, illuminating the patch I have cleared with stunning clarity. Suddenly, I see that the frigid deadish limestone has become Alive, resurrected by a path of the Sun -- oh, how it sparkles! Each minuscule grain pressured inside this block of Stone reflects a facet of the Light: it is a Labyrinth in itself that consists of a million Mirrors. I gaze at this Prism and smile and think, ‘It is possible that all the Statues and Birds and oddities are not so inflexible in their lust -- maybe they are just content with their Lime-Green Berry and do not hope for else.’ And so I rise up and place my Hand on the Door, the same as all the others, and push it open.