Double Dutch Delight
Double Dutch Delight
Isn’t this double Dutch door, guarded by the cool green tendrils of a thriving vine, alluring? It seems almost to beckon, promising rewards for looking closer. Don’t you feel as though you’d like very much to take hold of that handle and push forward, just to see what lies beyond?
“Charm is dependent on connectedness, on continuities, on the relation of one thing to another, often expressed as tension, like the tension between private space and public space, or the sacred and the workday, or the interplay of a space that is easily comprehensible, such as a street, with the mystery of openings that beckon, such as a doorway set deeply in a building.” James Howard Kunstler, The Geography of Nowhere.
I have always loved double Dutch doors, those which can have the top or lower half opened each alone, or both together. Have you seen the many paintings depicting a comfortable-looking woman leaning on the bottom half to watch the children play, to negotiate with a plump and rosy milkman, or to chat with a friendly neighbor?
My “little house of my dreams” has a double dutch door leading from the kitchen to a green, fragrant kitchen garden of herbs and vegetables and berries. It is a very particular shade of blue for which I have yet to find a name: a lovely something between deep sky blue and slate blue. (These window-shutters are just the color.) Honeysuckle and dog roses intertwine above it along the stone walls, shedding their intoxicating perfume on the summer air... I know; I’m much too Romantic!
Title Photograph: Untitled. © Citynoise.
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HILDEGARD said...
Oh, no! You are not much too romantic. How will you ever know your door when you find it if you do not have a definite picture of it in mind ahead of time? Of course, we must sometimes be contented with many, many doors before we find the one we’ve been waiting for all our lives. As long as the waiting doesn’t make us bitter, I believe we may have as high hopes as we wish, even for doors.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008 06:16 PM
Friday, June 13, 2008