Monday Musings: Portals
Yesterday's prompt for the April Fae art challenge was Portal. Since I've been doing a poem a day this month as well as the art challenge, I started brainstorming what a portal poem might be like -- and what portals have been special to me over the years.
The tendency in fantasy movies and shows like Once Upon a Time is to have a swirling vortex as the gateway between worlds. (I'm not immune to this image. In fact, the main method of inter-world travel in the Non de Velai books is a shimmering silver pool, though it often appears between two trees.) But the portals that appear in fiction are often more varied than that.
The first portal stories I can remember seeing were The Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland. The portals in these stories are naturally occurring phenomena: a tornado/twister/cyclone (whatever term you prefer) and a rabbit hole. While tornadoes weren't common where I grew up (outside of hurricane season), holes in the ground were common enough. We had snakes, rabbits, moles, and all kinds of other burrowing creatures in northwest Florida (even if most of them avoided our backyard).
Although the idea of simply slipping through the right crack in the world always appealed to my imagination, the real portal that speaks volumes to my soul and my imagination is a door. (Even Alice walks through several doors on her adventures, even if the rabbit hole is the beginning.)
A wardrobe door. A cupboard door. A door to a place that's bigger on the inside.*
Of course, Narnia isn't limited to the wardrobe. The children also travel through worlds via magic rings (another favorite of mine), the call of a horn, a painting (possibly the best entrance after the wardrobe), a door in a school wall (the closest Lewis comes to repeating an entrance style), and simply being snatched out of our world by Aslan's call.
This idea that the entrance to another world is probably right around the corner and just out of sight fires the imagination to create worlds to which we can travel. And authors keep returning to it for symbolic and plot-related reasons.
Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere (still my favorite of his works) features a main character who can create doors to other places anywhere she likes (though at the cost of personal exhaustion if she abuses the gift).
N.D. Wilson's 100 Cupboards series features multiple worlds and times reachable by doorways that range from the innocuous to the foreboding.
Harry Potter places the boundary between Muggle and Wizarding worlds on an ordinary train platform (though arguably the boundary between the worlds is more intangible and omnipresent).
Howl's Moving Castle uses a door that opens on multiple locations (and worlds) with the turn of a knob (a similar door appears in Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium).
Inkheart places the boundary between worlds on the tongues of gifted individuals who can speak words into life and vice versa.
In stories like The Secret Garden and Over the Garden Wall, the portal is simply a wall (or door) that needs to be breached/climbed (or opened), and the characters won't always realize at first that they've wandered into a different sort of story. (No, TSG is not a fantasy, but the garden itself serves as a secondary world within the story, especially for the characters.)
Alice even wanders through a mirror in the second book (something I didn't really discover until I saw the Hallmark version of the stories).
But whatever shape the portal takes, there's no denying it calls us to explore the realm of possibility and the depth of imagination.
What are some of your favorite portal stories? Are there any unique or bizarre portals that have stuck with you over the years? Let's talk about them!
* Though I confess that I rejected the TARDIS in my portal poem/musings because it was too recent an image to be foundational (for me). I'm far more likely to expect another world outside my front door than to spot a police box on the street.
The tendency in fantasy movies and shows like Once Upon a Time is to have a swirling vortex as the gateway between worlds. (I'm not immune to this image. In fact, the main method of inter-world travel in the Non de Velai books is a shimmering silver pool, though it often appears between two trees.) But the portals that appear in fiction are often more varied than that.
The first portal stories I can remember seeing were The Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland. The portals in these stories are naturally occurring phenomena: a tornado/twister/cyclone (whatever term you prefer) and a rabbit hole. While tornadoes weren't common where I grew up (outside of hurricane season), holes in the ground were common enough. We had snakes, rabbits, moles, and all kinds of other burrowing creatures in northwest Florida (even if most of them avoided our backyard).
Although the idea of simply slipping through the right crack in the world always appealed to my imagination, the real portal that speaks volumes to my soul and my imagination is a door. (Even Alice walks through several doors on her adventures, even if the rabbit hole is the beginning.)
A wardrobe door. A cupboard door. A door to a place that's bigger on the inside.*
 |
| This is me a couple years ago in Canada; we were at a theatre festival that was producing LWW onstage and the museum had a full exhibit on Narnia that began with the wardrobe door. Yes, it was magical. |
Of course, Narnia isn't limited to the wardrobe. The children also travel through worlds via magic rings (another favorite of mine), the call of a horn, a painting (possibly the best entrance after the wardrobe), a door in a school wall (the closest Lewis comes to repeating an entrance style), and simply being snatched out of our world by Aslan's call.
This idea that the entrance to another world is probably right around the corner and just out of sight fires the imagination to create worlds to which we can travel. And authors keep returning to it for symbolic and plot-related reasons.
Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere (still my favorite of his works) features a main character who can create doors to other places anywhere she likes (though at the cost of personal exhaustion if she abuses the gift).
N.D. Wilson's 100 Cupboards series features multiple worlds and times reachable by doorways that range from the innocuous to the foreboding.
Harry Potter places the boundary between Muggle and Wizarding worlds on an ordinary train platform (though arguably the boundary between the worlds is more intangible and omnipresent).
Howl's Moving Castle uses a door that opens on multiple locations (and worlds) with the turn of a knob (a similar door appears in Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium).
Inkheart places the boundary between worlds on the tongues of gifted individuals who can speak words into life and vice versa.
In stories like The Secret Garden and Over the Garden Wall, the portal is simply a wall (or door) that needs to be breached/climbed (or opened), and the characters won't always realize at first that they've wandered into a different sort of story. (No, TSG is not a fantasy, but the garden itself serves as a secondary world within the story, especially for the characters.)
Alice even wanders through a mirror in the second book (something I didn't really discover until I saw the Hallmark version of the stories).
But whatever shape the portal takes, there's no denying it calls us to explore the realm of possibility and the depth of imagination.
What are some of your favorite portal stories? Are there any unique or bizarre portals that have stuck with you over the years? Let's talk about them!
* Though I confess that I rejected the TARDIS in my portal poem/musings because it was too recent an image to be foundational (for me). I'm far more likely to expect another world outside my front door than to spot a police box on the street.
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