Walking in, walking through

doorway, traditional Tohono O'odham dwelling, Tumacacori

Several years ago now, I loaded my life into a rental truck and relocated to edge of the Sonoran desert in southern Arizona where I am now living. I've been writing, I've been painting, I've been exploring, but I am not quite settled -- still, even as years pass. My mind still leaps to cities and my spirit still escapes to oceans. I am trying to find my way into desert space and desert rhythms, still quite foreign to me but intriguing -- as the unfamiliar always is. I am thinking I will soon leave -- return to family and to city.

You know the old saw -- When one door closes, another opens . . . well, it doesn't quite work that way. When one door closes, you're on the other side, plain and simple. Either on the outside, looking up at sky, or locked in, wondering how you'll get out. You have to hike a bit to find another door, and when you do, it could be barred and stapled, locked just as tight as the door you just heard slam shut. . . Ya nevah know.

I found this doorway, wide open, magnificent in its welcoming, at Tumacacori Mission, a National Historic site not far from where I am living. Well worth visiting. Indeed, I will return.

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Once roofed, the food storehouse now welcomes the rain

Structure Gone, beauty still remains

A window provides one view of the partially restored mission building

Can we say that it's 'all' in the framing?  The doorway above, door-less and lock-less, invites exploration of interior space, while the window below thrusts us outside. Both are active spaces, and both exist because of the lines that frame, the borders that break the space, dividing the whole to two, or three, or more. What we see, what we feel, who we are, how we live depends for both stability and flexibility on the way we draw our borders and how we press ourselves against them.