Toilet Door poetry ranges from the eclectic, to the obscure, to the insane, the beautiful, and the hilarious. A warning before you read this blog post though, much of it also contains, frankly, toilet language! All nicely asterisked out, but if colourful language offends you, you may want to skip to the next post.

All of these messages will presumably one day be clues to civilisations that come after us as to what our life was like. They will puzzle and pore over obscure graffiti like:
“The Candle is burning and the wax ain’t happy”
and
“Check yourself b4 you wr-wr-wr-wreck yourself!”
Both of which were on toilet doors in the Foundry, in Old St … although it does not mention which country, unfortunately!

Perhaps the most mundane and oft-repeated poem (at least in my home country, Australia), found on toilet doors is this one:
Here I sit,
Broken hearted,
Tried to ****,
But only farted. (more…)

The phrase ‘cellar door’ was held by Tolkien to be the most beautiful in the English language … he said so in his 1955 essay titled English and Welsh. I do find it strange, though, that so many people have picked this up and run with it! The supposed notoriety of the phrases beauty has reached far and wide. It is mentioned in Donnie Darko, a popular film of a few years ago, and there have been numerous references to it in songs, films, and the titles of various things.

I can’t find any literature on anybody actually linguistically studying the phrase to see what value it holds phonetically, or comparing it to other phrases that are commonly held to be beautiful. There is probably a good reason for this – it was just an odd comment by a writer who happened to become popular because he liked writing about elves, and there really is no basis for the term’s fame except pure coincidence and personal taste!

If I start a war here, I apologise in advance … let us know what you think!

Photo credits: Cellar door by Evan Ripley

We’ve talked a bit about what doors mean to us, as part of our psyches … how they represent symbolic gateways, new beginnings and (old!) endings, transitions between one state and another, and all of that. Well, people in Hollywood recognize this too, surprisingly! And over the years there have been many movies made either centering around doors, mentioning doors in the title, or having them as a recurring motif, which is supposed to subconsciously indicate something to the audience. Here are a few of them…

Sliding Doors

This 1998 movie starring Gwyneth Paltrow just couldn’t work without the doors in it! Basically, there are two simultaneous plots in this movie, one based on Gwyneth Paltrow catching a train (making it through the sliding door), and one where she is delayed slightly, and the sliding door shuts in her face. When she catches the train, she makes it home in time to find her lover cheating on her, when she doesn’t catch the train … she doesn’t find him! The symbolism of the door opening, and the door closing, is obvious – the closed door is a missed opportunity (in the film) for emancipation, freedom and happiness, as she misses out on finding out the truth. The open door is then the opposite …
For what my opinion on movies (as a door knob blog writer!) is worth, I give this one 4 stars :-)

The Door in the Floor

I love poetic titles like this one, and think the movie title is much better than the novel it is based on, A Widow for One Year. That could so easily be a woman whose husband dies, and she waits a year before remarrying. Not particularly interesting! The idea of the door in this movie is highly symbolic, but not necessarily a noticeable motif when you are watching it. The couple in the movie, Jeff Bridges and Kim Basinger, are having family troubles … cheating, personal tragedy, an inability to move on. The ‘floor’ of the title represents what lies beneath the surface, and the door in the floor is the access point for what isn’t said, but is definitely there. In the movie, the ‘door’ comes in the form of a person – a young man who becomes fascinated with Kim Basinger.
We’ll have to explore that concept of people as doors, literally … could be very interesting! 3 stars for the movie.

The Boy Next Door / The Girl Next Door

I can’t write about just one movie here, because there are actually over a dozen movies named The Girl Next Door, or some variant thereof, and at least half a dozen named The Boy Next Door! I’m not sure how to explain filmmakers’ (or film-titlers’) fascination with boys and girls next door … perhaps something to do with the grass being always greener on the other side of your fence. Presumably it is because you would see those people every day, but they do plenty of things that you don’t see … but perhaps could, if you just watched the movie named after them! As a secondary note, for some strange reason, most of these films are gay-interest or mildly pornographic… so while your own doors are mysterious and symbolic, there are infinitely more provocative things going on behind your neighbours’ doors, apparently!

Early 1900s ‘Door’ Films

For what reason I do not know, there are scores more films produced early in the 1900s containing the word ‘door’ in the title than there have been since around 1930 onwards. There are some fantastic titles, like Pimple’s Mystery of the Closed Door, and other more usual titles, like The Open Door, The Locked Door, The Little Lady Next Door, The Bolted Door, The Door That Has No Key, and The White Man’s Door. All of these were made before 1927. This could perhaps be something to do with world culture at the time … in the same way that anti-communist America was fascinated with monster films, because they portrayed people’s unseen fears (and then people conquering them), perhaps this fascination with doors earlier in the century was due to a general perception of change, moving forward and moving away from the old … highly possible at the time of the Industrial Revolution and in between two World Wars.

Photo credits: L O B B Y C A R D S by Lavannya Goradia

There are so many superstitions about keeping things out, in, affecting luck and changing family fortunes by simply hanging various grocery items above one of your doors. Aside from making your house smell nice, things like lemon, fennel, mint, and chili were meant to also protect your house in various ways. Feel free to experiment yourself … but remember, brass, copper and iron are a lot more durable, and don’t go rotten so quickly

Fennel

Fennel is meant to guard against witches – you are supposed to stuff it in your keyhole. I am not sure where you are meant to put your keys while you are guarding against witches though.

Cactus

Putting cactus near the door is a Greek superstition – it is supposed to ward off the evil eye. However, if your cactus is grown from a cutting, it must be a stolen one! Otherwise it won’t root. You just have to surreptitiously bring a knife with you to your friend’s place, chop a bit off and put it in your pocket.

Lemon and chili

Oh, but not just any lemon and chili. Well, okay .. maybe any lemon and chili, but there must be a string pushed through the lemon (not around it), and then through the chili also. Tie it, only at one end, to a nail hanging above the door. This keeps evil spirits out of your house. Unless, of course, you do something silly like bringing in clothes from the washing line at night. (more…)

There are many superstitions associated with doors … and a few with door furniture as well! One of these I have a personal interest in, as a breeding member of the species – but however strange and terrible giving birth might be, I’m not sure that I believe this one enough to make sure I follow it on D-Day!

This old superstition about doors is that you must unlock every door in the house when giving birth, to make an easier labour. The symbolism is pretty obvious … so obvious in fact, that it is better not too think about it for too long! But I just have a couple of questions about this:

- What if you give birth in a hospital? Does every door in the hospital have to be unlocked? Does that include the prescription drugs cabinets?
- Or, if you give birth in a hospital, do you still have to unlock every door in your own home, because that closely symbolizes yourself? Would the advantage of having an easier labour be swallowed up eventually by the fact that when you got your baby home, all of its things had been pinched by opportunists passing by?
- Finally, every lock in the house, or just the ones on doors (the ones that things come through…!)

This superstition might go some way to explaining people’s olden day fascination with having lions on their doors – they needed something to scare away thieves while the doors were unlocked, while they were away giving birth so often!

Photo credits: Lil Sport by Angela Marvel