The wall stands like a ghost of the past. Time has scraped its surface, revealing the older, faded blue beneath. At first glance, the blue and white composition seems to reflect the sky, a serene illusion that invites exploration.
Evidence of rooms, floors, and ceilings remains, now lost to time. Yet the two boarded-up doorways hint at a lingering mystery. What lies beyond them? The sky wall is like a book with pages flown away, inviting contemplation while the doorways remain closed, offering only the impossibility of knowing. Together, they form a single, fragmented house, each part holding its own story. What tales could they tell?
This juxtaposition of the two parts of the same house, one that has all but dissolved into the ether, its stories absorbed into the sky, and another where the doors still hide the mysteries that remain locked within, lends itself beautifully to a philosophical exploration of their transient nature. Both have existed in time, yet they fade differently.
The first is nothing more than a memory, only the wall remains, admired by the wind and the odd passerby, its faded hues speaking of a life that once breathed within its boundaries. The rest has long since disappeared, the partitions mere ghost lines on the brick wall, as if the sky itself had lifted them into the heavens. This is not a ruin, for ruins speak of a slow decay; rather, it is a part of a house that has departed, leaving behind only the suggestion of what it may have been.
Its stories, too, have flown. Whatever lives were lived there, whatever moments of joy, sorrow, and solitude unfolded, have dispersed into the air. Perhaps they now ride in the clouds, travelling on the winds that sweep over the mountains. That part of the house is gone, and with it, the certainty of its stories. Only the canvas remains, a final marker of something that refuses to be entirely erased, a splash of colour against the grey of time.
But the other part, the one behind the doors, still stands, though time has weathered it too. Unlike the first, this remaining part of the house is not yet a phantom. Its doors remain stubbornly closed, as if holding back the stories that linger within. These doors are not just entrances; they are guardians, standing firm against the pull of time, shielding the past from dissolving into the sky like the first.
This part feels more real, more tangible, and yet the refusal of the doors to open suggests that its stories, though preserved, are trapped and not caressed by the wind.
The sky wall sings of ephemeral stories, stories that have escaped the imagination. They have joined the ether, and in that release, they are part of everything now: part of the air we breathe, the sky we look up to. They have become vast and unconfined, yet in doing so, they have lost their specificity, their detail, and their connection to the human. The stories behind the closed doors, however, remain imprisoned, held together by the walls that refuse to fall.
The relationship between the two parts of the house evokes a deeper reflection on the nature of memory and existence. The first, with its stories now scattered, represents a kind of ultimate freedom. Its life has already merged with the infinite, with the elements, speaking to the inevitable dissolution of all things. There is a purity in its absence, a reminder that everything must one day return to the sky, to the earth, to the invisible.
The second part, however, resists that dissolution. Its stories are still trapped behind the doors, and we wonder why they remain so. Perhaps the boarded-up doorways symbolize our attempts to hold on to the past, to preserve what we know cannot last. The part with the doors is still engaged in that human struggle to contain time, to stop its flow, to keep its stories from slipping away into the sky. But one senses that this part, too, will one day yield. The doors will fall open, the stories will escape, and it, too, will become like the first, just a memory, just a suggestion of something that once was.
And so, the two parts are not so different after all. One has already released its stories into the ether, while the other clings to them for now. Both remind us of the transient nature of existence, of how we live surrounded by stories, whether told or untold, visible or invisible. The first house is already gone, a ghost dispersed into the ether; the second holds its ghosts within, sealed behind closed doors.
In the end, it is all ephemeral. The walls, the doors, the stories, they all dissolve, one way or another. Some scatter to the sky, becoming part of the wind and the clouds, while others linger behind closed doors, waiting for their time to be set free. We stand in between, witnesses to this fading, knowing that even as we observe, we, too, are part of this same flow. Our own stories are destined to either drift away or be held behind doors, for a time, until they, too, fly.
