The shadow cast by the tiled eaves cuts across the upper part of the wall. Below it stands a plank door, and beside it a paper window takes the late afternoon light head on. The wood carries the reddish tone that comes only after long drying, and the window paper swells white as it lets the light run inward.
The earth of the courtyard is even, without a single footprint. The stepping stone is bright as if newly laid, and no one treads on it going up or down. All the doors are closed, but the feeling is closer to waiting than to being locked.
An old door has two faces. The side that guards the inside, and the side that receives those approaching from outside. In a single nail mark, in the dark blue of the hinge, in the lattice of light divided by the door frames, there remain as many handprints as the number of times it has been opened and shut.
This is what preservation is. Unlike mounting something unused like a specimen, it is leaving it in a state where it can be opened again at any time. The hands that select wood so the door frame does not warp and paste on new window paper come back every year.
On the bare earth beside the stepping stone, the shallow grain left by the sweep of a broom remains. Below the door handle, a part of the wood grain is worn especially thin and pale in color. Only the places a hand has touched over and over grow bright that way. The courtyard said to hold no sign of anyone is in fact a surface someone swept and tended until just moments ago, and that touch will have turned the closed door from a lock into a wait.
Winter draws back and the remaining light warms the wooden floor. The oldest thing in the photograph may be the number of seasons that wood has endured. Look once more between the door frames, and you come to know that the darkness inside is not empty.
