Door Posts
William Cayhews
Door Posts
By William Cayhews
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION
PART ONE
PART TWO
PART THREE
PART FOUR
PART FIVE
PART SIX
PART SEVEN
EPILOGUE
POST SCRIPT
POST
INTRODUCTION
It was evening in the restaurant at the Hotel Imperial, Vienna. My first impression of them was they were merely another pair of typical American tourists, probably retired, judging by their age. I could not help but overhear their conversation as I sat at the table next to theirs, but I had a difficult time following what the gentleman was saying. I do speak English well enough, but he kept on jumping from one story to another -- from one location in the world to another -- even from one time period to another.
I was transfixed by the things he was saying, so I mustered up the courage to interrupt their supper and ask if I could hear more. They were startled at first, of course, but then I found them to be warm and inviting. After the customary brief personal introductions were shared between us, they commented to each other about how odd their conversation must have sounded to someone like me who was outside the confines of their rather unusual dialogue. But as they gave it further thought, they agreed with each other that my presence might in fact be of some assistance to them in the process of sorting out all the information that was pouring out of his mind.
So, they graciously invited me to join them at their table. As I pulled up my chair, the gentleman straightened up, leaned forward and said he wanted to go back to the very beginning and tell us as accurately as possible about his bizarre and amazing adventure. He said he needed to slow down his mind and reorganize his memories as linearly as possible, in order to keep all of the various elements of his story in their accurate place and in their proper time period.
Eventually, we finished supper, but he was not anywhere near finished with the story, so they urged me to come up and join them in their hotel room, to allow him more time to continue the telling of his amazing adventure. Hour after hour went by, but none of us were aware of time until the sun began to rise and send a warm glow of light into their room.
After that initial session, it was quite clear to all of us that he had merely begun the process of pouring the information out of his mind and into our ears. We were each feeling somewhat spent from staying up all night, and slightly in need of a good long nap. So, they decided to rearrange their travel plans; and I agreed to go home and then return to the hotel later that afternoon, equipped with my recorder, in order to have a better way of keeping track of the wide variety of circumstances about which he was telling us.
Door Posts is the result of that initial happenstance meeting, and then much more subsequent time spent together throughout the transcription process. None of us are writers, but they sensed there must have been some reason why I was brought into all of this. And now, I am inclined to agree with them. This is the most amazing story I have ever heard, and I am honored to be the one through whom it can be shared with the rest of the world.
I am a professor of Art Theory and Cultural Studies here at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. In addition to my teaching occupation, as an avocation I am a painter. My mind works like a painter, so when I set about the task of writing the story down, all of the various parts presented themselves to me as different colors and shapes and patterns on a canvas. This is the only way my mind could make sense of it, due to its unusual nature.
I also felt compelled to represent in writing the unusual way the story was presented to us. It was an oral story, and he presented it as if he were an actor on a stage. It often seemed as though he lost himself and became the characters about whom he was speaking. In addition, he often spoke of himself as though he were merely another one of the characters in the story.
Another unusual aspect of the telling of the story was that some parts of it were elements of history, while other parts of it seemed to defy history. As he went on pouring out the information from his mind, he would often go back and forth between speaking in the past tense about the historical elements, and in the present tense about the other parts. In order to capture the style of the actual telling of the story, the historical parts are here written as he told them in the past tense, and the other parts are written as he told them in the present tense. All of this is true and consistent with the way he was actually telling the story orally.
This suits me perfectly well because the act of painting always occurs in the now. Every painter knows this. It is the reason why we are drawn to the activity. Painting takes us to another world -- another time zone -- a place where there is no past nor future. And this happens to be the exact same place where this particular story exists.
Now, in order to make the various parts of the story easier for the reader to navigate, we decided the past tense historical elements should be graphically represented in a sans serif font; and the other present tense parts should be represented in a serif font.
Occasionally, when the parts of the story were transitioning into each other they would intermingle in shorter segments. These shorter segments are indicated with narrower margins and in an italic font.
I do apologize for the more pedestrian content of this lengthy and seemingly uninteresting introduction, but I do think you will appreciate the advance notice about what to expect as you make your way through reading the story.
And, of course, my hope is that you will be as captivated by the telling of it as I was.
