The Threshold of Elsewhere

There is a specific weight to the threshold of a house you no longer inhabit. It is not the wood or the iron that stays with you, but the way the light used to fall across the floorboards at four in the afternoon, illuminating dust motes that have long since settled into silence. We spend our lives moving through doors, believing we are going somewhere, when in truth we are only leaving behind the version of ourselves that stood on the other side. Every doorway is a promise of a future that will eventually become a ghost. We carry the memory of the latch, the resistance of the hinge, and the sudden, sharp intake of air that accompanies a new space. But what happens to the air we displaced? What happens to the shadow we cast on the threshold before we stepped through into the unknown? Is it possible that we are still standing there, waiting for a hand that has already turned the key?

Kirsten Bruening has captured this sense of transition in her beautiful image titled The Entry. She invites us to stand at the edge of a space and wonder what remains behind the frame. Does the threshold feel like a beginning or an ending to you?