Old door. Lost stories.

On Colborne, near King
London, ON
February 2020
This photo originally shared on Instagram

On a desolate corner in a neighborhood no one chooses to be a part of, a weather-beaten door slowly loses its paint under a blinding winter sun.

No one's passed through this doorway in years, the plywood covering the nearby windows betraying the story of a building that no longer has a life of its own.

I don't ever remember a time when this building wasn't abandoned, so I'll probably never know about the stories and the lives that played out here. That thought saddens me, and I wish personal history wasn't as tenuous as it seems to be.

As I compose the shot of a place whose backstory eludes me, I imagine what it would be like for someone who was here before the plywood went up and everyone else moved on. What would it be like to be on the outside looking in, with memories of what happened here dancing through your head?

We've all passed through places like this on our respective life journeys, structures that imprinted themselves on us before fading into the distant past.

Standing outside them doesn't accomplish much. But whoever said reflecting on where we've come from and where we've been needed to be about accomplishment in the first place?

Perhaps it's simply enough to stand quietly and reflect on where we've been - and who we were with - along the way.

If a cracked old doorway can take us back there, even for a moment, then I'll consider it time well spent.

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