“There’ll never be a door. You are inside
and the fortress contains the universe
and has no other side nor any back
nor any outer wall nor secret core.
Do not expect the rigor of your path,
which stubbornly splits into another one,
which stubbornly splits into another one,
to have an end. . . .”
. .-from Jorge Luis Borges‘ “The Labyrinth”. The Sonnets: In Praise of Darkness. Penguin Classics; 2010
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I’ve not made a thorough study of Borges’ Works, nor his Biography. I have, however, enjoyed many of his writings recently.
The door as an abstract form is a transition point: any opening to a new world where rules and scenery change. A door is an opportunity. Perhaps you live in a Seeall world where doors and windows come like a waterfall at warp speed. For me, in a simpler world, I feel lucky to know a true portal when I see one. Borges’ works overflow with references to discrete places that have sharp borders and infinite depth: a rose, the moon, a labyrinth. It seems to me in his world that doors fell on a hopeless, repeating, circular map. I sympathize with a difficult choice, and admire the playfulness and wisdom of asking questions about doors. But I would ask him, if I’d had the chance to speak with him, if he had turned down some door in youth that became his ever-after tormentor. Each true opportunity –each storm– fully engaged, never repeats.
Borges revealed that (depending on the rhythm of one’s own inner map) a critical but unattended-to door may present itself in a thousand different forms. It can do so unrelentingly –think about a time in your life of a recurring dream– because it is the only next step available on one’s path. Or, at the other terrifying extreme, Borges also imagined a world that was door-less. Both extremes –an infinitely repeating circle of doors or no doors— offered worlds with no way out. There must have been some small beauty gained at the place of turning away from a door (like the lovely contemplation of its potential), and perhaps Borges knew about that himself, but I cannot find it in his works. Can you? Borges said, the word that cannot-be-spoken is the most important word in any story. Did he ever write a story or poem about a door that had the capacity to be opened?
Turning to another poet who understood a door, Rumi ingeniously proposed that, in the act of longing itself we are at our closest to touching God. This sentiment seems opposite to Borges’ explorations, and might, itself, have solved Borges’ problem. Without longing, a door has no permission to appear. My first longing, as a toddler, opened my first door. That was my first abstracted concept of “path”, and it arrived as a dream-like visualization of a door filled hallway. It happened upon my mother’s offering of the word, “someday” in answer to my now-forgotten request for some desired activity or object. I asked, “When is someday?” I thought it might be Sunday. I recall the answer was not fully understandable to me. But her explanation, now also lost in time, must have been a wise one to evoke in my mind’s eye a door.
“A clear head at the center changes everything
There are no edges to my loving now.
You’ve heard it said there’s a window.
that opens from one mind to another,
but if there’s no wall there’s no need,
for fitting the window or the latch ”
. .-from Rumi, “Sudden Wholeness”, The Book of Love; Transl. Coleman Barks; Harper; 2003
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What does the concept of “door” mean to you? Do you agree with Borges that there is no real door?
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Laura Maaske, MSc.BMC.
Biomedical Communicator
Medical Illustrator
Medical Animator
Health App Designer
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Thinking of doors. Doors, drawers, cupboards, cabinets, ect, all designed to compartmentalize, all useful in ways to shield, protect, and organize while we make sense of all our stuff.If we only had less stuff we may be free of doors or the like. Openness, what a wonderful concept, Of course how can this be possible? In our dreams perhaps, for isn’t it so that every thing is protected, shelled, even the smallest of electrons, except maybe the particles of light- quarks-? Yes, I believe I could exist without borders if I were a quark…..hahahahah Seriously, I am only a novice at science and there are places a quark may be contained and wish to escape, so that leaves only the confines of my mind which may be the freest place where doors cannot hold back freedoms of thought, thankfully, especially imagination.
So Sharon, in your view, it’s not even a question of opening doors to new and greater worlds. You feel there shouldn’t even be the need of a door or window at all. Pure open landscape? To me, in a smaller world and looking for doors now, it seems, grasping for greater things begins from our little worlds and then opens up to bigger and bigger ones as we are capable of seeing in bigger ways. It’s like a seed bursting, or an embryo and fetus from it’s nested place. I think the smallness comes from my grasping of the rules or laws. It’s good to be sheltered until the time is right. The opening happens when I learn that a rule or law has a larger scope than I saw in it before. Ever expanding outward.
Matisse Dream (or inspiration as an open window) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ono-oukkFaM
I know not which I like better, Borges writing or Laura’s contemplation on it. Both are provocative and bring to mind Aldous Huxley’s “Doors of Perception” http://www.mescaline.com/huxley.htm from which “The Doors” derived the name of their rock band. Jim Morrisson, a troubled figure indeed, was enthralled with the idea of of being able to pass through impassable doors and then returning which ultimately led to his death.
In addition to viewing doors designed to compartmentalize, I see them as opportunities to see what I have not yet seen or experienced, much like Jim Morrisson viewed them (my opinion.) I may be cynical in that I view most people as too easily steered away from opening closed doors. They stay on the easy path and walk down the hallway never venturing into “forbidden” areas or experiencing new opportunities. I think it goes along with a saying I either originated or have forgotten the author, “I don’t know what I am not supposed to do.” If the door doesn’t have sign that says, “Do Not Enter” then I most times open it, and even a few times when it does have that sign whether literally or not.
The scariest are the doors that we ourselves shut because what lies behind it is either too emotional or too embarrassing to ever open again. I put those in the hallway behind me and tend to focus my drishti toward the future. That hallway behind me, however, is a long one and has many closed doors in it. I guess that is the compartmentalization of which Sharon writes.