I had a Pink Dream.
The world itself appeared through a soft pink lens, as if I were wearing glasses that bathed everything in the hue. Light, air, even the edges of objects carried it. But somehow — a hunch I couldn’t explain — the grand hotel in the dream was actually pink. Everything else could shift, fade, or blur, but that hotel existed in pink, independent of my perception.
A few days later, I wound up in St. Petersburg, FL to visit The Dalì Museum. Salvador Dalì was obsessed with dreams and symbols, the way our minds navigate meaning in the in-between. On this particular day, the museum parking lot was closed for a Formula 1 setup, so I parked at Tropicana Stadium and took a trolley to the museum.
Leaving the museum, still on the trolley heading back, I passed a block of old, vacant buildings freshly painted pink. One wall read, “Art is the Ultimate Luxury.” The phrase made me snap a photo, prompting me to learn more about the buildings and the project behind them. They weren’t meant to last. Soon, cranes and concrete would replace them with a new condominium tower. For now, they existed in the pause between past and future, insisting on notice.
It reminded me somewhat of building my brick-and-mortar business. The lot was empty when I arrived — someone before me had cleared it, so I was the beneficiary of not having to decide whether to tear something down or reuse an existing structure. I put up a temporary door while waiting for construction to begin. Ephemeral and provisional, it made something visible where there had been nothing. In both cases — the door, the pink façades — beauty existed in the liminal space between what had been and what was coming.
Life is mostly lived in thresholds. Rarely fully present, fully past, or fully ready for what comes next. Temporary moments like this demand attention if expressed in interesting ways. They slow you down. They make you notice. They remind you that beauty doesn’t need permanence to matter.
The buildings will disappear. The paint will fade. A tower will rise (and eventually, it will fall). And yet for a few days, the city — and I along with it — existed entirely in that in-between. Suspended, fleeting, and complete like the Pink Dream, the temporary door, and the moments that exist only long enough for us to see them.
Serendipity sometimes shows up twice. Just as I was reflecting on thresholds and impermanence, I stumbled upon a local Paducah artist’s exhibition called We Are All Just Passing Through by C. Todd Birdsong, an exploration of liminality itself. If you’re nearby, the artist will be giving a closing conversation on Thursday, March 5th, from 6–7 PM at the Paducah School of Art and Design in the Bill Ford Gallery — a rare chance to step into another threshold, see beauty in transition, and notice the in-between for yourself.
Are we present enough to see the temporary, or do we wait for it to become impossible to miss?