28. how to build a portal `

Hello, dear ones— I’m writing to you from the front porch, from the deep plum of an iris, from the discomfort of my own stillness.

I am at home in New Hampshire. This means I’ve been shuffling around the house I grew up in like an NPC … putting on layers of my mom’s sweaters, taking them off, and looking at myself in various mirrors. Standing in the driveway and staring at the sky. 

The machine of me glitches at the slowness of this atmosphere. 

And, in my slowness, past rot rises to meet me. 

Clamoring and mycelial versions of myself surface, begging to be attended to— threatening to trap me in their timelines. Against my better judgment, I plumb my memory boxes for old journals and photographs. Derrida warned against archive fever, but I can’t help myself.

The ants are bigger here. Fat and purposeful, they ferry crumbs across the baseboards. Haven’t seen an ant so big in Lisbon.

I fold laundry before an afternoon rainstorm. The dense wet plants smell like every mistake I’ve made. They smell like a home I haven’t stopped running from since I turned eighteen, launching myself, again and again, to dispersed corners of the globe.

I grew up reading Bridge to Terabithia, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, which means I was conditioned to believe that there are ordinary passages leading to extraordinary places. I’ve spent years looking for them.

All my life I’ve believed in portals. Was I primed for escapism? Weren’t we all? Our smartphones offer synthetic portals—chances to commune with the world from the moment we open our eyes. Lazy augmented portals…. endlessly churning content and delivering dopamine. I also wonder, what is the point of confessional writing when it’s just eventually co-opted? At what stage of the apocalypse will I find myself writing thinly veiled advertisements parading as diary entries for Instagram? (that said… if you ever see me posting pictures with vitamin gummies or something and writing long impassioned posts about my childhood, mind your business).

I’m still looking for a door. Personal liberation from the encroaching atmosphere of careerism, a way out, a way through. My life this year has run the gamut of “how did I get so lucky?” to “Why me >:( ????” —it’s the boohoo woohoo continuum. And, as I’ve found so far, a portal appears at the highest point of woohoo or the lowest point of boohoo. A portal is the unfathomable möbius strip of time, a portal is a patience, a portal is a stillness, a portal is the ecology of everything magic and improbable rearranging itself in the tune of you.

We can build a portal by circling the drain, spiraling up or down, traveling, or, as I’ve been reminded recently, by staying still.

~Creative updates:

• The podcast interview I shared last month has a little write-up that goes along with it. To my absolute delight, the post is titled: “Poetry, Travel, and F*ckgirls with Emily Marie Passos Duffy.” You can check it out here.

• On June 29th at 7 pm I will be reading poems in Chicago at the Book Cellar with Robert Eric Shoemaker! Come through!! <3 Tell your Chicago friends!

• I have four new poems published over on my paid tier!

  ~

  Thank you for spending a slice of your precious time here with me. <3 As always, this missive is a free monthly offering! If you would like to support my writing, research, and creative life further, you can subscribe to my paid tier, buy my book (or request it at your local bookstore or library) or Venmo me @ duffylala ! Thank you, endlessly.