from “An Extremely Well-Funded Study of Doors”

Evan Williams | An Extremely Well-Funded Study of Doors | above/ground press | September 2023 | 20 Pages

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The note says only: Go out and find the very best door.

Never once did I question who the intruder had been, or why he had left such a specific and large amount of cash presented so politely in his wake. To the latter: people are fundamentally good; and, to the former: he had clearly been a representative entrusted with the delivery of my Genius Grant.

As it does, doubt crept in. Perhaps the intruder himself had been the Genius, and not I, and if this is to be the case, am I now, in possession of the Genius Grant, the Genius? And if I am now, by transference or genuine award, a Genius, then it is clear that I have a duty to fulfill the Genius’ project.

And so I went looking. Consider this pamphlet a set of buyer’s notes, a thorough investigation under the orders of academizing burglars. The question you must then ask yourself is: is the nicest door a door one can buy, a door one must take, or a door one must build? The same is worth asking of dreams, which are the true subject of any undertaking. Nothing that follows is a dream unless I say it is so.

*

When I go out of my home through the broken door, I look at it with love. It has been a good door, and even now endeavors to conceal the inside of my home. It is a modest home, a one-story ranch house with a garden in the back. Before I embark on a Genius stroll, I have to water my plants. Plants are living things, and a Genius can always postpone their genius to tend to the living.

I find a body where my gardenias usually sit. I feared this, but did not expect it. I told myself the fear was irrational. The irrational often becomes true when it is written off as such. The body has a ski mask on its face, and severe cuts along its arms. There is too much blood for the body to be a person anymore, but nothing about the leap from my window ought to have made this person a body. It is irrational enough to be real. I water the blood from his body and take him to the cellar that I use to escape tornadoes.

When a Genius dies there are usually bagpipes that play. I am chastising myself for my lack of bagpipes when I remember that I do not know for sure that he is a Genius. He may be a Genius messenger, and not a Genius at all. I sing him a song. Bodies are dead things, and a Genius can always postpone their genius to tend to the dead.

When I leave the cellar in search of the very best door, the skies are blue. They do not look like tornado skies, and the Genius/Genius messenger is dead, but it is also possible that he is alive.

I close the cellar doors and look at them. They are rusted, and, were I not up to date on my vaccinations, I would risk tetanus every time I used their handles. If I squint, the rust looks like abstract art against the industrial metal of the doors. They have protected me through three tornadoes. The doors are very strong and possibly responsible for saving my life as many as three times. Beauty is as much a function of utility as utility is a function of beauty.

Now that I’ve written that I don’t know if it’s true. Beauty becomes a function of utility only if utility is a metric for what is beautiful. Or, utility becomes a function of beauty only if beauty is a means of measuring utility.

Utility seems more a form of beauty than beauty is a form of utility.

I think that this is the first important lesson I have uncovered as a Genius. And, if it is true, then the cellar doors are quite good doors so far as best is defined by its relation to aesthetic categories like beauty. Utility is closer to an objective category and bolsters the value of beauty.

I am uncomfortable with the tone of this thought. I wish to simplify. I leave the body in the cellar and close the doors and lock them in case of high winds. They are good doors.

*

I decide to walk up and then down my block. It is a residential area which I chose in part for its beauty, so it is possible that the best door is here.

It is difficult to walk very quickly or comfortably with $800,000 dollars in my pockets. Also, an amount of cash this large is conspicuous, and I am an anxious person. I make slow progress.

It’s unclear to me whether I am to use the money to procure a door by bribe or honest purchase, or, whether the money is to be used for travel and observational purposes. Since there were no specific guidelines about this given to me by the Genius/messenger/intruder, I feel comfortable in my decision to buy a high-quality red wagon in which to carry what is now $799,900. The wagon maneuvers well.

I look carefully at all of my neighbors’ doors. In order to prevent further transference of the Genius Grant, I do not use their doors lest I fall through a window and wind up in a cellar. I just look. Much of life is spent this way. When I spend my life in this way I usually do not feel much, but spending it this way with a wagon holding $799,000, I feel that I am completely open to the beauty of the world.

*

From the street, in a wind-blown tree, I see a birdhouse. Birdhouses are common, but they used to be more so. Children don’t often make birdhouses anymore. I certainly do not make birdhouses. This has to do with scarcity. There is only so much time to spend performing quaint tasks. I, for example, am only able to pursue my consideration of doors because I have $799,900 in my red wagon, no job, and no family. I am wide open, as they say. But for many, the pressures of living disallow the taking-care of others, particularly non-human others. What time we have to spare must be spent in the service of human individuals and groups in need. Making birdhouses is as good as punching your neighbor in the throat.

Even if you’ve never made a birdhouse, you will know that their primary feature is a very small hole that serves as an entrypoint. Notably, birdhouses do not have doors. There is just this opening. Birds, as a result, never experience alienation from nature. It is also true that they are never protected against it. The two come hand in hand, safety and alienation. Or, the illusion of safety. A very strong wind may still blow away a house with a door. And then what? You’re there, huddled in the bathtub, exposed. The birds are flying away, together.

The birdhouse hangs from a tree on the property of the house. It looks ridiculous. It is a sign of leisure, possibly due to wealth or retirement, or both. I am trying to get home to my intruder. I knock on the door (yellow, cheerful shade) contemptuously.

A man answers. He is nondescript save for the parrot on his shoulder. The wind gusts scarily. Before I can say hello, the parrot speaks up: “A Genius in the wind will die a floating leaf.”

“Is the birdhouse for the parrot,” I ask the man. I have to know. I don’t even need to see his doors, this is the only question that matters. If a speaking thing might live without doors, there are implications.

The man does not answer. The parrot looks me in my eyes. “Visiting,” it says.

I ask the parrot, “Does the man live in the birdhouse?”

As if in answer, the house’s cheerfully yellow door, which is open, blows off its hinges and into the sky.

“God spares the Genius,” says the parrot. “Go home, genius.”

From An Extremely Well-Funded Study of Doors by Evan Williams. 
Copyright © 2023 Evan Williams. 
Reprinted with permission of above/ground press.