The Dao of Doorknobs

Your doorknob says more about you than many of your other worldly possessions might say if they could talk.

In this analysis, we shall include knockers because the difference between knobs and knockers is semantic only. You see, there are doors which can be pulled with little but the aid of a ring, often known as a knocker. If the other hardware is loose, pull the damn thing as hard as you can (unless, of course, the door opens the other way, in which case you are standing in the street looking quite the fool, like the time I pulled hard on a door that had a “Push” sign).

Nay, there is another reason we shall include knockers in the knob category. By doing so, we gain the wisdom of Jacob Marley, the man who forged his own chain link-by-link and dragged it through a knocker to scare the living hell out of Ebenezer Scrooge. ‘Tis not the Marley who sang about buffalo soldiers or the three little birds on his doorstep. Jacob Marley brought the wisdom of ages by inviting three ghosts to lobotomize Scrooge and force him to eat Christmas goose with his nephew. Thus Marley is the patron saint of knockers and knobs.

(Creative Commons/Flickr/Jim, the Photographer)

Without further ado about Marley, we now progress to our study of doorknobs and the knobs of cabinets. We shall do so by invoking visual evidence.

Glass knobs. This reminds us how important a good glass knob can be. How did we reach such a conclusion? Because we see a set of these, perhaps at a country antique store. We know the glass knobs are decorative enough that yuppies from the city are willing to pay real money for used knobs during their weekend visit to the country to browse the antique shops. Nicely faceted glass knobs have a spirit of their own, perhaps even playing host to ghosts (or was that your reflection?).

Nope. Not gonna touch it. That's not a knob. It's a handle. Handles can be used instead of knobs, but a handle will never replace a knob, if you catch my continental drift. Given all the brushed stainless steel and faux nickel accoutrements in hardware stores of this day, this particular handle looks fairly beat up. What did they do, try to break in with a machete and some steel wool?

That's fair game. Looks like cheap wood, though, just this side of trailer park trash. It's not compliant with the modern laws against formaldehyde-emitting fiber board. Even termites won't touch that; they need more fiber in their diet. The brass-flavored knob is about to fall off anyway. Nobody wants that to happen except for the drug addict looking for a new trailer.

Gnarly. If that's on a barn door, why not keep it open? Don't kick or it might fall down.

Aha, now here is the fun kind. They gleam like a cat's eye. Cabinet, two for the price of one.

What can you see? Streaks of light, something flesh colored, a long appendage that looks frighteningly like someone's middle finger. But that's my imagination talking. I see something far more pure.

The second image is too blurry to see the reflections. Hazy emanations perhaps suggest the second coming of Jacob Marley's ghost.

What are these streaks? Can a knob be a window into your soul? If you blur your eyes, can you see the lodestar burning bright and guiding your path to salvation?

Look again! The knob in the first picture is alive. Did it look at you? Oh yes, it did. And what did it see?

(Public domain images)