Notes

I listen with my ear pressed to the door but I can only hear my breath.
I touch the brass handle with my fingertips, but I don’t dare to grab it and push it down. It feels odd, smooth and cold; as if I have never touched a door handle before.
I hear a rustle and look around but only something soft touching my feet makes me looking down. It is a piece of paper.
Picking it up, I can still feel the warmth of someone just holding it. My own hands are cold.
I wonder why I had that urge to pick it up. I wonder how I came to this door.

What would happen if I left it there without reading it? I still only feel the paper, don’t want to read it just yet.
I breathe in; sniffing the paper in my hand. Smoke, incense and a floral fragrance makes me smile and feel warm.
The scent of paper says so much.
What is there behind, who sensed my presence there and my curiosity?
I look at the sheet in my hand, trying not to read the words. It is unmistakably the handwriting of a man, I think.
Before I realize I have read the words written on it.
They say “Now you are standing here at this door. Why don’t you come through it?”
I search for the pen which I always have in my pocket, sit down where I stand, and write “Why should I?” and slide the paper back under the door.
There’s a cold breeze down here, draft from the other doors that were opened. It makes me shiver.
I press my ear against the door once more.
Rustling again, this time my eyes were fixed to the ground at the moment the note emerges.
It reads: “To explore the universe behind it. You are standing at its threshold.” neatly written under my reply.
I scribble: “what universe?” and slide it back.
I don’t believe sweet words, they might disguise poison. I feel the need to be rude, but the curiosity makes me wanting to know more.
This time I don’t hear rustling, the paper is immediately exchanged for a new sheet:” Love. This door is your heart - only through it you can enter and explore.”
How can the writer know what I was going to ask…?
I quickly write:” Is it nice?”

It is silly to ask this, I think, as soon as the paper is withdrawn from the other side.
After a pause the same piece of paper comes back “Why don’t you come through it and see for yourself? I will be with you, guiding you.” the writer still tries to write neatly.
Not me… I write hastily… I hope he can read – no, understand.
“This is the most beautiful of all the doors here”. And it is indeed.
All the other doors promised similar things. I look around.
Some of them look rough, chipped, while opened they make unpleasant sounds. And it was so cold behind some - or scorching hot. I never realized it, always opened the doors too quickly and was trapped behind, struggling to find the way out.
There were no universes; these were doors to prison cells and to dungeons. I must have been blind, I think, looking back.
A new note comes back: “Because it is your heart. Not your reason and expectations”.
This leaves me surprised.
I scrawl:” What is behind this door? Can’t you tell me?” This time I keep holding the paper, while I slide it under the door.
The writer on the other side is pulling it, hesitating as soon as he feels the paper resisting.
He doesn’t think that the paper is stuck, I notice. We hold it together, sliding it a bit back and forth, to the sides... A childish game, it’s almost like touching each other. Another way of communicating - through a solid door.
I grin. Finally I let the paper go. Now I really want to see what is behind.
Promising door, exciting words leave me curious and wanting.

The paper comes back quickly: “I am here, on this side. It is the open space side, the side with more doors, the side that is infinite, the side that has the universe. Only this door leads to it”
I wonder: am I standing on the wrong side? All this here is limited… it makes me searching and wandering.
What makes him write this?

Another note comes sliding through the gap.
”Come through it and see for yourself!”
I stand up from my kneeling position.
I grab the handle… after all, I made it here. I found this entrance. This is IT.
I lift my hand, let my knuckles touch the door: “knock knock!” A male, throaty and soothing voice replies from the other side after a long second: “Who’s there?”….