Big ones, small ones; I like all sizes and shapes. And now that I have your attention, doorbells are pretty cool too. At my house, you have a choice, the knocker or the bell. Here’s a picture of my knocker.

As you can see, it’s a bear. A gift from my brother and sister-in-law, on the occasion of my encampment here. I actually prefer that, if you visit, you use the doorbell. Leave the bear alone, sez I, and most people do. He’s behind a screen door. I just don’t want some loquacious asshat twisting off his little tail.

But what, you might wonder, set me off on this silly subject of door knockers and bells and such? By e-mail today I got this quote:

I have a great deal of company in my house; especially in the morning, when nobody calls. -Henry David Thoreau

Thoreau died in 1862, so he was talking about people showing up at his house, engaging his bear, removing their hats and wiping their shoes and expecting to be “entertained.” Without so much as calling first, leaving a voice mail or sending a fax. And by company, he meant that he had the company of his imagination.

It reminds me of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and his claim that he woke up in a haze from an opium-enhanced dream, and was in the midst of writing Kubla Khan when he was interrupted by a knock at the door. Hence, the poem is a fragment. I’ve always been skeptical. I think he just passed out and didn’t write any more. (This story was mentioned last night on the Studio 60 TV show, but they got it wrong. It wasn’t at 4:00am as the character said, because it was the postman who supposedly woke Samuel up, and they don’t come around at that hour.)

It’s interesting to me that it’s no longer the custom, at least in my part of the word, to come calling upon your friends at their homes. We never just show up around here. Do we? Do you have any friends who come rapping upon your ursine percussive? I have a neighbor who stops by now and then; in fact, he just dropped by while I was writing this post. But that’s OK. In fact, I think I would be rather lonely if I had no neighbors to talk to. I think it’s regrettable that the technologies of telephone and computer are isolating us to the extent they are. No man is an island, and it’s not like I’ve had a recent glimpse of Xanadu.