I take in a quick breath. I was thinking about stepping out. I'm in a revolving door in New York. Its at the front of the bottom floor of a large building. I was thinking about the time I was supposed to buy flowers for a teacher. Before I've tentatively reached the tips of my toes out a little farther, I have to duck. The door is coming now and carried on, I pick up my wintry grey skirt to avoid the doors impact.
My breath is quickened and my neck hot under my scarf. The anxiety fades and I am again walking in the round glass contraption. It welcomes people in from the elements and spits them back out. Or perhaps the reverse is true - it backward spit pulls them inside with nary a welcome, and welcomes them leave on their way.
Either way, it only goes one direction around and it never stops, and a million people will pass through every day. Everyone who goes by is trained in the ways of the door. Everyone enters it in the same way - to the right. The exit or the entrance is the opening and they are the same thing because, whats the point of calling it an entrance or an exit? Some people will walk into and others will step off. The doorway is not a place for a normal person to stay at. There is no warmth, no one who does anything of consequence in the doorway. It is not a place for protests or passion. People who pass by don't rest and they don't recover in the doorway and they don't stay.
I keep thinking that I will step out of the revolving door. Its a tremendous decision. I would have to lift my skirts and balance my umbrella under my right arm and hold my heavy coat. I would have to decide if when I step out, will it be left foot first or right foot first? I am not sure that my shoes are tied tightly and the laces might get stuck in the door just as soon as I'm leaving the passageway.
And then what? Well, I'd have to put down my coat and the umbrella and tug my shoelace loose, perhaps with the same arm and hand, it would be an awkward motion. I would have to retie my shoelace before I step out past the revolving door.
My body tenses because in the time I've been thinking, the door is continuing its mindless, onward path and I am in the way of it. My body hunches instinctively and I duck and head on in the glass revolving door. Its dusk and I am alone, no one sees me struggling with myself in the revolving glass door. Even though I am on the streets of New York, there is no one who walks with me in the revolving glass door. Someone else could hold onto my coat, then I could tie my shoelaces! I could step out from the door, not having to hold onto all the things I own which are only falling out of my shaky grasp.
I am again at the point of the revolving door where most people step out and without another thought resume going about their lives. They enter and they exit and they don't look back. I've spent much time in the revolving door and I see the view over and over, the front and the back and the sides. None of it looks very appealing to me. What's the point, I wonder, of the building and of the safety from the elements and of the constantly revolving round glass door. What if the revolving door was going clockwise rather than counterclockwise? Would it switch direction in the southern hemisphere by the Coriolis effect? I would still be there, dragging myself around in the revolving glass door. Whats the point? It would make no difference while I am in the doorway
I could leave the revolving door into the building, in the same way that people enter in the revolving door when they leave the building to go home. Its dusk fading into night on the one opening, what's the point of calling it the entrance or the exit? In the other view, the building has a large finished desk, and a large walkway and a small seating area.
I could leave and I could sit down at the seating area. What would I do, then? Sit there longer? What a stretch of time it would turn out to be, sitting, if I left the revolving door to sit in the building. Maybe after all that sitting I would decide to go and walk. What would be the point, though? I would still have the revolving door to battle once I got up to leave. I would have to carry my umbrella and my coat with me walking, they are heavy items to walk with. Especially when one isn't going anywhere and one's mind is still distracted by the revolving door just exited and caught up in its ever revolving whoosh. I'd likely as not just pass another glass revolving door on the way.
It would be best to duck it, the glass revolving door. But it has a strong backwards-spit pull on me, bringing me in and keeping me hitting the walls, round and round.
Still in the revolving glass door, I look out into the grey sky turning to night and in the building across the way, a light turns off. I start to look out past the revolving glass door and wonder if someone is done with their work day, if will they now exit the building. Perhaps I'll see them - a Black man carrying a briefcase with a large slow step, or no, perhaps it is an Asian woman who scurries.
I have to duck as it comes again at me, obliterating my thoughts. What's the point anyway? I wouldn't be able to talk to that person, in the dark in the night. That person who will just walk out of that building and, not getting stuck in a glass revolving door, proceed on with their daily motions.
The familiar glass revolving door comes in to take me around. I almost welcome it; I don't want to be out there on that street in all that dark life that is uproarious laughter of people in New York out for entertainment.
Walking in my circles, my desperation grows. I look around a bit more, for the person that left from that building across the way. I don't see them walk out from the building. I missed it and it was my only chance and I didn't yell out, What's the Point? as I struggle to dodge the revolving glass door. I can't understand the people who walk back and forth rather than round and round in a door.
The back and forthers have careers, families, homes. Those in the glass revolving door only have their glass revolving door, and their shadowed stuttering step. Their every move is weakened by the constantly revolving door.
What's the point? The glass door is swinging faster, more imminently involving me in its path. It used to be a little slower and I could keep up with it and step out definitively into the elements a few times. But now what's the point? The glass revolving door is going faster now and its hits me more and more often. There's really no chance now that someone would hold my belongings and help me from my doorway. So then, what's the point? My distraught mind looks again at the same view out between the building and the elements as I circle round.
I am really engulfed in this doorway and What's the Point, What's the Point, What's the Point is insistent. I decide to finally enact the bidding of the revolving glass door, and stop. I stop moving and I stop trying to keep my legs going. I never get to drop my belongings, they are keeping me in this doorway. I stop but I can't rest and in no time, I'm facing the forward moving glass door and on its centripetal path it hits me headlong.
What's the point, the doorway, the opening? But it doesn't knock me out. It just slows down because my body weight is resistance and it keeps moving around, pulling my jacket under it. I'm terrified and my body is aching from the hit and the sadness. In my fear I am in a rush to leave. The door is moving slowly dragging my coat, but no matter, I pull it free and I shoot out from the revolving glass door. I exit into the building from the opening where the people leaving from their day of work enter.
I'm not trapped in the revolving glass door but in my faint exhilaration I am overwhelmed, alone in this building and I do not know what to do with myself, so I remain still. I don't look backwards. But balefully I realize I am still carrying my beaten coat and umbrella and am away from the elements. I can't seem to figure it out. My heart is beating, but from near I hear the meaningless rhythm of the revolving glass door.
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