Open and Closed

 

 

Vietnam

 

Since the beginning of time, doors have symbolized both great opportunities and thwarted dreams.  The open door is a metaphor for new life, a passage from one stage of life to another, and metamorphosis.  Closed doors represent rejection and exclusion. 

 

 

Kashmir

 

 

The Door
Too little
has been said
Of the door, its one
Face turned to the night’s
Downpour and its other
To the shift and glisten of firelight.

 

 

 Bamiyan, Afghanistan 

 

 

For doors
Are both frame and monument
To our spent time,
And too little
Has been said
Of our coming through and leaving by them.
- Charles Tomlinson

 

 

 India

 

 Cambodia

 

 

Tibet

 

 

Kabul, Afghanistan

 

 

Mingun Pagoda, near Mandalay, Burma/Myanmar

 

 

Porbandar, India

 

 

 West Kabul, Afghanistan

 

 

India

 

 

Los Angeles, United States

 

 

 The door swings open:

O god of hinges,

god of long voyages,

you have kept faith.

It’s dark in there.

You confide yourself to the darkness

You step in.

The door swings closed.
- Margaret Atwood

 

 

 Kabul, Afghanistan

 

 

 Bamiyan, Afghanistan

 

A door just opened on a street–
I, lost, was passing by–
An instant’s width of warmth disclosed
And wealth, and company.

The door as sudden shut, and I,
I, lost, was passing by,–
Lost doubly, but by contrast most,
Enlightening misery.
- Emily Dickinson

 

 

Bombay/Mumbai, India

 

 

Kabul, Afghanistan

 

 Dhaka, Bangladesh

 

The closing of a door can bring blessed privacy and comfort – the opening terror.

Conversely, the closing of a door can be a sad and final thing.
 The opening a wonderfully joyous moment.

- A. Rooney

 

 

 

 Monastery at Rolous, Cambodia

 

 

 

 

Macedonia