Rewrite of Week # 2 - Window Prompt
Bill Plapp

When looking out the backdoor of San Pedro Chapel

       I become aware of the daily functioning of the place.

The backdoor is like the stage door of a theater

       or the kitchen door at home.

It's the way those who do the grunt work

       enter and leave.

This may seem of little interest compared with the formal entrancing and exiting

       through the front double doors.

But without the back door and what comes and goes there,

       the place is only a Potemkin-like shell.

Without the back door and the comings and goings through it,

       there is no meaning - no life - to the place.

It's like communion. Someone has to gather the grape juice and fish-food like crackers

       and assemble them before the formal and sacred ceremony can occur.

So, my interest in SPC lies with how it functions - the labor involved

       to make the place attractive for those who enter from the front.

And what if the backdoor were not there?

       What if there was just a plain wall at the back corner of the chapel?

The place would not exist.

       It would be totally phony.

Like a movie set, not like reality.

       Indeed life requires the two entrances.

So, SPC is like life.

       There's the formal front door we present to others

and the private backdoor which is like our own secret reality.

       Without it we are not real.

Finally, I am reminded of Edward Arlington Robinson's tragic poem Richard Cory.

"Whenever Richard Cory went down town, We people on the pavement looked at him: He was a gentleman from sole to crown, Clean favored and imperially slim So on we worked, and waited for the light, And went without the meat, and cursed the bread; And Richard Cory, one calm summer night, Went home and put a bullet through his head."

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