Threshold

On Friday afternoon, I cut through intersections that wove weft lines across old trolley lines tucked between cobblestones. I parked on Howard Street in front of the marble stairwell. Deep breath: what a week.

I was supposed to be en route to my friend’s house for dinner, but followed instinct to make this diversion. I had wanted to get to the Eubie Blake Cultural Center for months. I had missed my colleague’s show there, missed two of my own exhibit openings at other galleries, missed deinstalling my sculpture in Massachusetts (which required my hiring a Junk Removal Specialist to trash it). A month of deprivation. I needed 15 minutes to myself.

I pushed to open the door.

It was locked.

I pressed against the bronze handle, nothing. Locked. I looked at the clock: 5:30pm. Glanced at the posted hours, which read ‘Closed at 6pm’. Then I saw a button for an intercom. I pressed it.

I peeked through the glass to see a coat draped over the information desk chair. Waited five more minutes. Pressed the intercom again. Couldn’t be closed, right? Not half an hour early on a Friday? The recessed lights were shining on Mabel Lee’s yellow boa-fringed silk dress from the 1940s.

I wondered whether I should just leave. I knew I was already running late, but I wanted this time. This solitude and chance to explore. Fifteen minutes to sink in art and be carried away. For me, I suppose it’s a fix — like a smoke or Manhattan or selfie. Caving in to the inner recesses of need to take the time to indulge. I waited another minute, then saw the docent walk past the front desk. I knocked.

He welcomed me in and gestured towards the exhibit. I thanked him and exhaled.

This was the first time I’d been in a gallery by myself in three months. A drought for me. I grew up visiting art venues every weekend and being ensconced in culture. Since I’m in the process of legally separating from an abusive partner, my days have been filled with paperwork, meetings, and dread. Almost everything in my life stopped in order to address these issues.

In the ancient Egyptian scroll The Book of Dead of Hunefer, Hunefer is evaluated for the afterlife as shown through colored heiroglyphics. If his heart did not balance the weight of a feather, then he would be condemned to nonexistence. Preparing these papers were like my getting ready to balance my heart: they were my ticket to my new life.

During this time, I’ve been sleeping on a couch. While I’m thankful for a place to rest, night pulls all company and distractions away and leaves me scampering through mindmaps like catacombs: empty hollows of chasing myself. Prayer, music, and Instagram nap.

I slept three hours a night for the first two months, in physical refusal to accept this as my lot. One night, after a particularly difficult day, I covered myself with my crimson blanket and wept, reaching both hands to the universe, pleading for help. There was no one and nothing. I don’t remember falling asleep.

As I felt more protected, I created this routine. I flip three blinds, crawl under the blanket, and fall asleep looking at the moon and stars. The window above the couch faces southeast, so I follow the moon’s trajectory and imagine invisible threads of universe pulling it along. While I have pondered God, Dylan, and Likes, I have wholly succumbed to the universe’s web to carry me, like fans in the front pit of a rock concert when they lift a performer through the crowd. It’s a dependable, beautiful way of closing the day. Unless it’s a cloudy night. And this past week it rained for five straight nights. Daybreak became my shelter.

Wandering through the first exhibit, I realize I’m moving briskly. Trying to take in as much as I can, filling my eyes and brain with as much artwork as I can. I am starving. I’m hungry for hues and textures and forms and fabrication. It is a feast. Total joy. These ten shades and tinted colors on blank white walls. I take photos of each piece as souvenirs of time.

I slow as I enter the second gallery. It features a distinguished female artist whose work I’ve admired for the past decade. Vibrant portraits at quarter profile completed on used fabric canvases eeked of character, refined skill, and passion. She claims to be “disconnecting herself from the inherited constraints of society… unapologetic about letting [her] work be in tune with [her] feelings and no one else’s. And that, I believe, is revolutionary,” her artist statement read. A powerful voice, inspiring exhibit. But it was time to leave.

Other visitors were being guided to sign the Guest Book, so I stopped at the front desk. The docent was on the other side. I praised both exhibits and he thanked me for coming.

I asked him his name.

“My name’s Kevin. What’s yours?”

“I’m Stephanie, nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you, Stephanie, I’ve seen you come round here before,” he said as he outstretched his hand.

“Happy to be here,“ I said as shook his hand, nodded, and started stepping towards the door.

He gathered his coat since I was the last visitor.

“Now just remember this, Stephanie,” he said before I reached the door. I paused. He was an older, humble man that reminded me of my grandfather.

I looked up at him.

“Now if it’s dark outside and you don’t see any stars, remember you are the star. Just so you know.”

I was speechless.

I didn’t know. I don’t know. But there’s that universe thing that, somehow, keeps swaddling me like a woven blanket and is keeping me warm. I thanked him, said I’d be back soon and stepped across the threshold.