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Murillo Soranso's avatar

How timely this post is today! I loved State of Paradise too. What is your portal? This has been a theme my entire life. I crossed a portal to come to the US in 1997 (which reminds of another great book, Exit West). I stepped through a portal when I came out in my early 20's (Happy Pride!), I stepped through another portal when I left a career in higher education in 2021 for a corporate job. I was forced through a portal I didn't choose two years later when I was laid off from said job. And then as a result of that layoff, I deliberately ran through a portal that has brought me here, to finally say it out loud: I'm a writer ❤️. And finally, as I write this, I stand before another portal. I'm taking time to decide if I will cross it and what it means if I do or don't.

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Pips's avatar
Jul 1Edited

I light a candle. A vanilla scented tea light that sits in conical mauve glass in a metal stand that I've had for thirty years. Something about the flickering light and the vanilla scent that helps me settle in. That and coffee. I must have coffee.

There are project-specific portals too. For my memoir, a picture of me when I was nine (one of only two that exist of me under ten years old). In the memoir, I alternate chapters on either side of a pivotal night when I was nine. For my novel-in-progress, it's a Newton's Cradle (those silver click-clack balls). Newton's Cradle is also the title of the novel.

Other meaningful knickknacks on and around my desk: a pewter wizard my mother gave me; a small barbie doll, her hair in a bun, that I think I stole from my friend Stacey; some glitter false eyelashes; a pack of B'loonies; sparklers; my college copy of As I Lay Dying; and a minibar size bottle of Chartreuse I got in New Orleans that makes me think of Hemingway, to name a few. I guess I have a lot of portals.

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