Thank you, you're welcome

Images only keep up with words when words are thought of as images, which words are before they become what I thought I meant to say and what I actually heard.

Yesterday in San Francisco I overheard a woman say, " thank you," and the woman she was thanking say, "you're welcome."

It was so simple, so elegant, an opening and a closing that were both open and closed almost both at once.

All I knew of these two women were their words and the way their words made me feel. I didn't care what they looked like, what they were doing, or why one was thanking the other for something I hadn't seen.

Hearing these two women I vowed to become more aware of words coming out of my mouth, to think of words I was using as both a door opening and a door closing, without closing the door I'd opened with the words I saying.

There's a doorway somewhere in Prague that consists of two doors that have been brightly painted by a series of passers-by. I imagine the door was once only made of wood and that through the years people have been speaking to the door and leaving behind their remarks for other people to see. I don't know what these people were saying to one another that they couldn't have said to one another out loud instead of saying it in spray-paint, but I thought the door was beautiful regardless and took its picture.

That was over a week ago, when I was in the Czech Republic and wandering around Prague.

I think I've changed my mind about the doors I saw in Prague, not seeing them as saying the same things they said when I first heard them, not seeing them any longer as talking to one another as if they were one.

Why aren't there more people like these two women in the world? The one who said "thank you," and the other one who said, "you're welcome."