Threshold Guardians

I'm at the point where I have read and absorbed pages and pages of words and have a whole forest of ideas in my head. I have culled arguments from papers I've written, taken notes on Virgil and Pliny, drunk chai lattes and mocha frappuccinos, stared into space, daydreamed, listened to the blues, considered buying a new mascara, and mopped my kitchen floor.

I have passed through the much scarier (and prolonged) period of just standing at the edge of the woods, staring at what appeared to be an impenetrable tangle. You start to push your way in, and you see that what appeared to be solid actually opens up a little, showing a passage where there didn't seem to be one.

It's like that instant in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, when pushing through an ordinary wardrobe full of coats with a seemingly solid back suddenly leads to another world, or in Through the Looking Glass, when Alice climbs through the mirror and finds herself in another country. You could also compare it to that moment in the Harry Potter books when, in order to get to Hogwarts, the kids have to run as hard as they can with a luggage trolley at a seemingly solid wall. Writing is like that.

No matter how long I write, or what kind of writing I do, I usually feel inadequate at the beginning. I've found that (solvitur ambulando) it's best to keep putting one foot in front of the other; progress is progress, including mistakes, and things start to take on a rhythm of their own if you just move. What seems like stumbling turns into something more graceful and patterned as long as you keep going. Think you're going to sound like Abraham Lincoln in the Gettysburg address? Forget it, at this stage. You have let go of your dignity and just scramble.

I recognize my delay tactics -- a sudden need to look at the Soft Surroundings web site, to check prices on silk comforters, and to watch a video of the cat that adopted a baby squirrel -- for what they are. They all express a reluctance to take a run at that hard place in case this time there really isn't a way through and I end up with bruises and scratches on my face. Or, more likely, there is a way, but it requires a lot of hard digging. Other people have explored writing (and reading) as processes of initiation, but this is actually my first time to realize that it applies to me, too.

Crossing the threshold is a liminal moment in any adventure, the signal that you've committed yourself. Fears are like the demons in The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Wrathful guardians, hungry ghosts, and hell beings may be just the projections of your own mind, but they still have flaming mouths and talons like razors. The minute you show them you mean business, though, they will simmer down and let you by -- they might even turn into a bouquet of flowers or an angel bearing that pale green sweater from Soft Surroundings. They are actually on your side, even if they do have ten heads.