Three doors

Notice is hearby given

A note is pinned to the great oak door:  A wedding is taking place. Of course! The woman we saw earlier carrying lilies into the castle; the waiter setting glasses on white linen.

I can’t imagine getting married in such a grand venue. Something about its scale unsettles me. A print of Folon’s American Flag hangs in my living room, a reminder of the discomfort I feel in large spaces. No wonder I came back to live in Ireland. An entire country smaller than the state of Ohio.

Not many castles in Ohio.  The wedding photos will be spectacular.
http://store.metmuseum.org/limited-editions/jean-michel-folon-american-flag/invt/99002776#.VA1qq_ldXIl

Front Door

The Famine Exhibit is well done. I wander through the exhibition rooms until I come to the door of the Callan Workhouse. It hangs in its frame surrounded by empty space, its knocker waiting ominously.

I stand in front of the door, my fifteen year-old daughter by my side. I can’t bring myself to touch the knocker.  Not even now, a hundred and seventy-three years after the workhouse first opened, ninety-five years after it closed.

http://www.irishidentity.com/stories/pauper.htm

The fog will clear

Classes start soon. Some of my students will be back in a classroom for the first time in decades.

We often read Miroslav Holub’s poem The Door at the start of term. The students see it as an invitation to change. I see it as a celebration of the changes they’ve already made by coming back to education.

We almost always like it.

Go and open the door.
Maybe outside there’s
a tree, or a wood,
a garden,
or a magic city.

Go and open the door.
Maybe a dog’s rummaging.
Maybe you’ll see a face,
or an eye,
or the picture
of a picture.
http://thereaderonline.co.uk/2007/11/22/featured-anthology-staying-alive-miroslav-holub/