portals

i clipped this gif yeah!

i want it to play when tapped

far out now i want it to play only once and start at the right cycle

squinting helps you see through portals

hey click me

lets talk for a bit. i wanna make portals. i’m not sure quite how it works, but i think i’m drawn to it out of a desire to grok something else, something other. i want to imagine the unimaginable maybe. if i can make a portal there maybe i can sneak up on it before i get a chance to understand. that sounds pretty irresponsible tbh. what else, i guess i want to do some trailbuilding. '‘the crack in the cosmic egg’ envisions our reality as a clearing in the woods where we’ve set up camp. what there is to know and understand is an infinite dark forest, and we draw our magic circle socially, culturally, maybe materially? (note i gotta get back to reading that. theres a sequel even.) i want to walk the perimeter of our clearing, look out into the woods and now and then foray out into the unreal. for me it realizes itself physically with actual journeys, i walk a lot, i pack a lunch, thinking about clothing and shoes and water and weight and routes and potentialities is not just grounding but texturally appealing. i’ve been so many places in the country, lived and breathed new air, i stepped across america into adolescence. thats a bit flowery, but if you’ll grant me a moment to imagine a physical landscape as a layer over the spiritual world (think how the dimensions in minecraft relate to each other nonlinearly) granting travel (day to day travel) the practice and attention of a spiritual excursion has really gotten me some cool places. in ordinary states all i have is the physical world as model of the spiritual, while calling on the spiritual as a map to the material. my best example is roaming in new orleans, my first unsupervised foray into the fields of culture and infrastructure. with an unfamiliar map surrounding me, i set out day to day exploring like the spokes of a bicycle wheel (which often was the vehicle carrying me). if i devoted a day to exploration, and was adequately prepared, i encountered my most playful, communicative, sensory relationship with magic and soul. following ques along the journey; graffiti, train tracks, shaded streets, avoiding loud noises, whatever i could project a spiritual reading onto, i would learn from my surroundings; when you approach certain types of things they lead you certain places, neat! any day i adequately devoted to this practice was unfailingly fruitful. i would follow the signs of grace right to a hidden place, either with a gentle personal beauty, a vibrant new community, or a flyer leading me to another adventure. as i drew my mental map of the city, not unlike the minecraft map which fills in as you explore, i got familiar and skilled at packing and preparing for a day out. i now have a backpack which i received on an adventure, and fits my need just so.

now, this is quite a material layer to the concept i’m dancing with. sometimes venturing out means other things. talking to new people, asking questions, going to events, seeking cultural gatherings, making art, reading, surfing the net, having an intimate conversation, meditation, worship, spiritual practice, we’re going places! within a similar group the magic circle shifts, here we stand the youth thinking about the climate here i stand in religious community thinking about protecting the most vulnerable, here i walk myself living in the worlds of becky chambers, robin wall kimmerer, deepak chopra, deleuze, martin luther king. here we are on the internet, where the loudest voices say the frontiers lay in artificial intelligence, in better graphics, in more complicated programs, in greater and more expensive hardware because that’s what our magic circle demands. we’re like a root bound plant. i’m not sure we have the culture to support this type of development, where are our stories? on turning i can see a very different frontier. one where technology and communication are truly more accessible and grokable than ever before. where we can actually build meaningful and tightly woven culture with the new tools presented to us. where we could slow down the pace of things and learn to use them. i’m especially interested in how new production methods could make technology more sustainable to produce and maintain. what was the point again portals well check it out here i am building them.

i dont think we live in isolation from everything we’ve made. we have so many stories and i’m pretty sure they’re all real. these portals could be to anything. i could get people together through websites, i could start a bookclub and we all go somewhere together. i could send tfolks who travel through my trails to other portals where they’ll go on from. i could open or channel old portals into the pool i’ve drawn here and welcome ideas and massage flows into continuation. i think by representing them and breathing life into the idea it’s inevitable that i fall into one eventually, i’m not convinced the physical world is illusion which is an exciting mystery, but i know there is so much other stuff we wouldn’t describe as part of it. like hearing something around a corner or through a wall you can know about it as well as anything in the room with you. “spirits in the other rooms” of the psyche maybe. maybe my hearing gets good enough to know more about those things i cant see, maybe i learn to see through walls, maybe i get to go into the other rooms, maybe the walls change shape or doors open or i built them in the first place who knows! mystery abound. for the time being i want to make maps. i want to imagine new places, ones i can invite people into, i wanna crack some cosmic eggs, find some paths in the woods, clearly mark some and keep some as secret trails and places to rest, i want to find churches and Old Trees and treasure and music. i want to learn the names, the secrets, the stories.

how would i know i had arrived somewhere else, and where i was had not simply changed?