David K. Leff, Essayist, Poet, Lecturer

Closed Openings

As they age, buildings tell stories about change. They may lack a mouth, tongue and vocal chords, but they speak in a kind of sign language, in hieroglyphs of structural and decorative alterations over time. A house may gain additions with the growth of successive families, or get new doors, exterior stairways, and   other features when market forces dictate that it be broken up into apartments. A church with a dwindled congregation may see new windows or ornamentation as it transforms into a mosque, office, or retail store. Old factories become apartments or commercial space dictating a variety of changes. “Age plus adaptivity,” wrote Whole Earth Catalog creator Stewart Brand, “is what makes a building come to be loved.” But loved or not, change is necessary for survival.

Jaybird (poem)

Shrill herald sounding alarms
of awakening at any hour,
the blue crested rascal screams
his presence shattering winter’s cold,
shriveling summer’s heat.

Alive with antic movements,
madman shrieks, harsh whistles,
rattling clicks and clever mimicry
Jaybird is a centripetal axis of bluff
and bluster, doings and goings.

Icily, he watches me watching
him, a lumbering earthbound
creature neither quick
nor colorful, never knowing
that he’s the only miracle I need.

Beautiful photo courtesy of Leo Kulinski, Jr

 

 

Getting a Grip on Doorknobs

Grasp with your palm and fingers and twist. Turning a doorknob is as close as you can come to shaking hands with a building. Handled most every day without a second thought, there is no part of a house or other structure with which people are regularly more physically intimate. Made in various shapes and   materials, they can be strictly utilitarian or functional works of art. Noticing doorknobs may seem a silly pastime, but in addition to the eye-and-hand-satisfying beauty of well crafted ones, they can lead a curious mind into a universe of tangents about mechanics, history, patents, technology, craft, and security.

My fascination naturally began at my Connecticut home, a modest nineteenth century Greek revival sporting seven different kinds of doorknobs. The fanciest of them belongs to the front door, a Victorian Eastlake design of faded brass in a complex floral and geometric design. A couple other outside doors have similar, if simpler designs. But most of the remaining doorknobs are made of shiny brown ceramic or cut glass. Installed on both interior and exterior doors, there doesn’t seem to be any logic to their placement. The only ones consistently installed are in an addition of the 1990s where plain bright brass plated knobs pop out of the doors like glowing golden mushrooms.