of doors" comes from
Dostoevsky's Crime and
Punishment.
The Interrelated Symbolism of the Door and the Quill
I. Life as the opening and closing of a door:
As a child, I once ran away up the stairs from my family, slamming the door behind me.
My mother called these doorgames, because someone might be behind, with a hand caught in the door. The forlorn character of these events set the concept in stone, where it waited to become a part of my own set of symbols.
Never play doorgames�
"abandon hope ye who enter here!"
stop playing doorgames
stop when you play doorgames
you stop when you play doorgames�
you die playing this game
you are playing this game with Death
stop playing doorgames, Death!
Reasons a door symbolizes life in the context of death:
it relates to the wall and the corridor as symbols
a fated life is a corridor or string cut by the fates
a wall can represent life�s ultimate boundary or limitation: death
because a door opens it represents the possibility of life where
otherwise there would only be death, or the absence of life
(all life is miraculous, even absurd. Likewise, that a door is a wall that opens is absurd and miraculous)
The doorknob represents the limited grasp of thought and choice,
guided by curiosity and wonder to find light and darkness
The life-door is a door going inward and outward at the same time,
and either path may have light and darkness. One of the greatest
mysteries of life may be the light-in-the-darkness and the darkness-in-the-light
The axis of life and death is also the axis from blindness to curiosity,
as moments of greatest realization or awareness or happiness
come in cycles of dawning and abandonments, as the door opens to reveal
the uncertain contents of a room or outdoors and closes with the finality
of leaving a definite experience. Inbetween we find a complex reaction
to the basic reality of change: fear of new experience and a lingering attachment to the things we leave behind. There is a comfort and uncertainty in the partial loss of life passing to memory which comes to enclose us as a womb, and fear in the anticipation of the final loss, the last death.
Christian churches especially make prominent use of doors, presumably as a symbol of the prospect of the after-life, and the threat of hell. Masonic orders don�t use their front doors, I sense out of a respect for death. Afterall, masons build walls. Coffin lids are kinds of doors, and similar to closets which often hold symbols for things which survive beyond the grave: coats symbolize identity and linens persevering comforts and love, or the question of love. ~August 18, 2004
II. From an earlier process:
The pen makes snakes, the door operates by them�snakes make the circle of life, the door opens by a turning motion, and a lock. The lock is the door�s ink, the defining principle�black or white paper, locked or unlocked door, because the principle defining potential (can the door be open or closed) is higher than the natural actuality of whether it is closed or not, at least as it relates to mechanisms as opposed to qualities of transcedence. Machines are closer to living things than are pure states of being or non-being. What I meant also to say before is that doors operate by snakes because snakes find a way through doors, the snake is that which lives successfully in a chronological environment, a world of choices or opportunities, of locked and unlocked doors. If a door operates by snakes, and the paper or canvas can be the origin of snakes, perhaps the origin for the operation of the pen and paper lies in the lock of the door. The turning of the knob can represent a thought or awareness. The opening of the door can represent a dawning or darkening of the mind from that thought . If the door is locked, then perhaps the knob will not turn. Such a thought is forgotten. If it does turn, but the door will not open, the thought did not find frution in speech or creative work, the idea didn�t blossom into a rewarding experience, or the awarenesss found that it meant to open a different door, or dwell on itself for a longer time.
NEXT: Positive Neutral and Negative Symbols
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