between the shadow and the soul

I am a firm believer in the power of iTunes to select my music so I often listen on shuffle. I was just putting my make-up on and Ironic by Alanis Morissette came on. Now everyone knows it isn’t ironic when you finally get up the courage to fly, kiss you kids goodbye and then die horribly. That’s just mean. It’s not ironic when it’s raining on your wedding day, it’s a sign your making a mistake. It’s not ironic to win the lottery and then die, it’s just common sense to stop playing the lottery at a certain age because you’ll only have to leave it to your kids.And there is certainly nothing ironic about 10,000 spoons when you need to cut your steak.

Tell you what would be really ironic, if the word ironic was a made up word with no definition.

Just another cruel trick of the French.

I realize I have set myself up, with my overconfidence and self-promotion, ‘come view my serious blog, it’s serious’, for a fall and that I will, most likely, take the tumble. I am Naomi Campbell teetering atop my purple platforms, or Cheryl Cole before my first X Factor performance. Unfortunately I have neither prerecorded my song nor taken a bunch of cocaine to soften the blow.

I thought long and hard about what should be my first port of call for this blog, what wrong should be tackled, how should I save the world today? I could have gone for the jugular and talked about Nick Griffin and what, in my mind, is at the very heart of freedom of speech in the UK today, or I could have lamented about the environment, global warming, the green problem, or maybe I could tackle poverty, or I could have written a  call to arms to my third wave sisters, let us join together with our girl power and quick witticisms, against the media and the beauty industry. But no, I did none of these things. I was at work and the topic of this entry struck me, almost, in the face.

The Door. That’s right, I shall give the door the platform to shine it has so long been denied.

‘But no other blog has ever written about doors before!?’ I hear you think, that’s right. Because this blog is all about pushing the boundaries.

‘No one even cares about doors, or what you have to say about them, Kelly.’ Could be your other thought, to that I think back, ‘No ones cares about you.’

William Blake once said ‘Death is a doorway’ and then, years later, another great poet echoed ‘I’m thinking about my doorbell, when ya gonna ring it? when ya gonna ring it?’  Both insightful pieces of verse that, together, capture the true meaning of door. Both end and beginning.

When was the door invented? It wasn’t. It has always been there, some people say God was taking a walk down the street of eternity one day and came across an opening, this was the door way to a giant open space. God saw the space and said ‘Wow, d’you know what? A universe would look great over there in the corner, it would really maximize the feng shui.’ And thus the universe became. All because of a door.

Or something like that.

Doors open up opportunities and they hit you as you leave. They welcome you in and shut you out. Doors can be painted red and your neighbors will always be painted greener.

Outside of the infinite struggle of starting and finishing doors pose two specific points of irritation and conflict for me as a female, a librarian and a walker through doors.

01.) I thought the proper use of doors would be obvious, a passage in and out, but no, some people take it upon themselves to mix it up for the door community. The door community doesn’t want this, it’s a traditional community with strong values. It doesn’t want you to stand in it’s threshold, creating a bottleneck, while discussion the inappropriate activities of your roommate. The doors don’t need to hear that. They don’t want you to sit at their feet as if you are worshipping them like the golden calf. No. They do not want any of these things. They just want you to walk through them. Like people have done since the dawn of time. Don’t be a revolutionary, leave don’t linger.

02.) The second is the always pertinent question of door opening. Now, as a librarian I often come face to face with doors while carrying a tonne of books and I always appreciate it when someone opens them for me. And I often curse those who don’t under my breath. Sometimes over eager young gentlemen will come rushing from afar to open them for me, slaying my metaphorical wooden dragon. Now, I don’t mind this (in fact I like it, I find it helpful and charming) but I do know that it can often be seen in a negative light. Some might say; I don’t need any dude to open a door for me, i’m an independent woman, it can be seen as act of dominance of said male. To be honest I don’t think this is very true of any women. We are unlikely to not walk through a door because a guy opened it for us, opening doors, in my eyes, is just common courtesy.

The second, more important aspect of the door opening dilemma is the constant myth that feminists don’t want their doors opened for them. You see this in film portrayals of ‘the modern woman’ particularly in the 1990s.

It’s wrong.

That stereotype, like all stereotypes involving feminists, is demeaning and undermines any realistic attempts at equality. To reduce the struggle to such insignificant, everyday occurrences is ridiculous and unhelpful. Don’t do it.

So, just a final thought for you, brothers and sisters of the internet, open doors for each other. It’s nice.

While I am not new to the internet, in fact me and the internet go so far back that I can say ‘It was better in my day’, well, apart from the 3 day load time for a primitive version of yahoo!mail, but I am new to blogging. Sure I have other accounts dotted around the world wide web, a tumblr to post the pretty and the lolzy, a livejournal to post my emo feelings about the world (and my immense love for television) and a facebook under a pseudonym to try and make it look like I am cooler than I actually am. But no blog.

Until now.

Welcome to the dawn of a new day.

My aim here is to post coherent prose about a specific topic on a semi-regular basis. The impact of these insights into me and my wisdom will alter your world forever.