Title: The Door.
SRO #039
Author: Smooth Ray
Size: 4.5”x2.5” (on 4x6 canvas)
Date: 2021
Medium: Watercolor on 140-pound cold pressed paper
Note: Some time, a long time ago, Smooth Ray was down in Oaxaca, Mexico, eating tacos and drinking tequila. Pretty standard stuff, really.
Except on the last night, Smooth Ray came back to the hotel and had a little trouble finding his room. A pleasant desk clerk helped, and on parting asked, "Necesitas algo más?"
"No," an ecstatic Smooth Ray replied. "Excepto ... todos los misterios del universo!"
Rather than laugh, the clerk pointed towards a door at the far end of the hallway and solemnly said, "Esa puerta." And then they were gone.
Smooth Ray didn't get much sleep that night. The clerk's voice, their serious manner ... what if it were possible? What if all the mysteries of the universe existed just beyond that door? Why not? Maybe all the answers lay inside Room #312 of the Hotel Oaxaca?
Smooth Ray never knocked on the door, never got close enough to touch the doorknob. This was decades ago, years before he would ask the same questions in earnest rather than jest. Today, it's not hard to imagine Smooth Ray kicking down the door to get at answers. Then, however. ... Was Smooth Ray, even Smooth Ray?
The door stayed closed. Tequila courage only takes you so far. ... A regret? Could It have all been seen, so much earlier? How would life have unfolded differently, if Smooth Ray had opened that door?
Absurd questions. There is a universe where Smooth Ray reached out, turned the doorknob and stepped through. That just isn't this universe, and that's fine. Smooth Ray is working his way back to that door. Or if not that door, back to the space on the other side of it, through a different door.
Status: Donated to a free art project hosted by Higher Self in Portland, Oregon.
