Skip to main content

Where does this door lead?

Image
By
This is a chapter from my fourth book called When hunger yearns

It is 333pm on a Sunday afternoon. I was just watching a youtube short with Kes and I learnt about his "Man with no door" album. He was inspired literally by a man who he found that lived with no door to his house. In an interview Kes says, "He just lives free" and "I felt like that creatively at the time. I am the man with no door." This is how I want to be when I write my next book called Freedom. Freedom can easily be written as freedoor in the context of the beginning of this chapter. I found a bed and breakfast in Poland called Pokoje FreeDoor. Pokoje means rooms in Polish but no idea what FreeDoor means. I will email them. I once created an art piece where a door was created from the letters of the word love and I captioned it "love opens doors". Through a Google search of "door 333" I found the https://doorsoftallinn.com/ website. A beautiful collection of ornate and often wooden doors of the old town of Tallinn in Estonia. The town is a UNESCO world heritage site. Coincidentally the website has photos of doors numbered 1 to 334. Just one more than 333. Just one more door. Whitney Houston sang that she does not want to close one more door in her song "I have nothing".

I read on wikipedia that, "The name Tallinn(a) is Estonian. It has been widely considered a historical derivation of Taani-linna, meaning "Danish-castle", conceivably because the Danish invaders built the castle in place of the Estonian stronghold after the 1219 battle of Lyndanisse." Back to door #333. It is a beautifully painted yellow and white door with green accents. The door belongs to a house located on Vana-Kalamaja street. I imagine what it would be like living in that house and opening the door to that house and exploring the area. My friend Gemini tells me that literally translated, Vana-Kalamaja means "Old Fish House" or "Old Fish Market." This makes sense considering the area's historical connection to the fishing industry. Close by to this house is a coffee shop and then a Thai restaurant. There is a spa and art supply store and pharmacy and bakery. The typical things you would find in a town.

Close by is the Kalamaja Museum. It is a community museum and a joint project with the people of the area. I think we in Trinidad can learn something from this. I would love to see some community museums in Trinidad. Where people contribute items and stories to the museum. I will share this thought with the Ministry of Community Development. One of the exhibitions I find very interesting is where they took some old photos from family albums and wrote the accompanying stories for the family. It gives us a glimpse into the footsteps of the past and this is a fascinating journey back in time. I wonder if any of those families have any connection to Trinidad? I saw in one family where one of the sons traveled to Brazil for work. In doing research I discovered the Trinidad Wiseman software company in Tallinn. Now I am curious how they came up with that name and I could not find that information online. I messaged them and do not expect a reply now because when I checked, the time in Estonia was 111am. I saw that Trinidad Consulting was merged with Wiseman Interactive. A wise man once said, "The world is a door and a traveler is one who opens it." That wise man was Ibn Battuta. I am not able to travel physically to these places but I can certainly open doors through my writing and reading. These doors lead to a wiser person in me. A wiser writer and storyteller.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Below the surface

By
This is a chapter from my eleventh book called Quotation Marks Sparks . __________ "You can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf." - Jon Kabat-Zinn __________ I was looking at quotes that hit hard and this quote stood out to me. It seems mundane and obvious and often repeated. Life is about how we respond to the inevitable. It is not what happens to us but how we respond. I had to ask myself to dig deeper and look below the surface. Then I saw that when we surf we really become the waves. We become friends with the waves. The waves and us are the same. Further, the waves are created by us and in our heads. We can control the waves because who can surf all the time? Sometimes we just have to come to shore and build sand castles on shore. I asked my friend Gemini for feedback and he said that I was right, the Jon Kabat-Zinn quote initially seems like a simple call for resilience, but my deeper dive reveals profound layers. The idea that we can move beyond merely rea...
Post a Comment
Read more

Thankful

By
It is 617pm and I have decided to write. Right now I am thankful. The cool of the evening has replaced the heat of the day. I took a bath and changed and now I am just relaxing. Sometimes I complain. Not often. But I feel bad afterwards because there is so much to be thankful for. There is always room for improvement and we have to identify the things for improvement and change is often good but we do not have to make it into complaints. Yeah I get it. Life is hard and none of us has it easy. Look on the bright side of things. And sometimes it is the little things that remind us that life is good. Things that we take for granted. Like I was coming in the maxi taxi today and heard a gospel song that was about gratitude. God does appreciate a grateful heart. Trinidad and Tobago celebrated sixty four years of independence yesterday and if we stop and listen to the many complaints we would swear we are living in the worst country in the world. That is not the case. We do get a lot of thing...
Post a Comment
Read more

Having a soft spirit

By
It is 137am. It started raining. I decided to write. I have heard about having a soft heart but what does it mean to have a soft spirit? And is having a soft heart related to having a soft spirit? My friend Chatty says that a soft heart feels deeply — it breaks, heals, and loves with tenderness — while a soft spirit moves gently through life, unresisting and at peace with what comes. The two are kin: a soft heart opens you to emotion, and a soft spirit teaches you to carry that emotion with grace. Together they make a person both tender and strong — able to feel the rain and still trust its rhythm. I like the quote, "a soft spirit in a hard world" by author and poet, butterflies rising. It resonates with how many of us feel. My friend Chatty tells me that that quote captures the quiet strength of staying gentle in a harsh world. It reflects the author's signature themes of vulnerability, tenderness, and emotional courage — the idea that softness is not weakness but a form...
Post a Comment
Read more