Pacing a Portal

Jo inserted the magnetic key and hit “enter,” then set the treadmill to go at a steady 13 minutes, 30 seconds per mile pace for warming up for her walk.

It wasn’t always like this. She remembered the days when a warm-up was eight minutes, thirty seconds, always at a run. But that was before the herniated disc, before the days of racing in 5Ks and marathons were shot for good.

Now, she resigned herself to trying to staying fit and walking for what seemed forever. But once in a while, she’d sneak in a run. Just 10 to 20 minutes or so, to feel like she did when the adrenaline was going and her body felt like a well-oiled machine that wouldn’t let her down.

Today, she thought she’d do a little bit of a run to make the walking less boring. It didn’t matter that she was wearing a longer pair of exercise pants with her usual t-shirt and running shoes: the sweat would make the effort feel good. The fact that she had her little orange iPod shuffle also helped her cope a bit: music always made the workout go faster, even if it was walking. Sometimes she’d watch a movie on the little TV in the room in which the treadmill was kept, but today she decided that music alone would be fine. She wanted to think.

So with music blasting in her ears, Jo upped the pace to 12 minutes, then thought “What the heck?” and made it nine. She started to run, and felt good. Some days she felt draggy and had to jump back down to a walk, but today she felt fine.

The treadmill hummed along, and Jo decided to up the speed it a little more. She hadn’t felt this good in a few years, so she bumped it up again, to an eight minute mile. Her breathing adjusted quickly, came easy and even. It matched her pace.

“What if,” Jo thought, “What if I tried to do a few minutes at my old pace? Just five minutes or so? It wouldn’t mess up my back at all.”

So her right hand found the “increase speed” button again: really just a button with a little upwards-facing arrow on it. She found herself going at a nice pace, almost her old race pace. If she was outside, she’d have started to taste that metal in her mouth, the metallic taste of adrenaline and mucus and accomplishment.

It amazed her, but after a few minutes, Jo wasn’t tired at all. She couldn’t figure it out: to run at this speed feeling this way had taken months of training before. What was going on? Her hand found the up arrow again, and she upped her pace by another 30 seconds. And then another. No problems. She was running faster than she had before.

Finally, she maxed out on the treadmill’s speed, according to the brochure the manufacturer had included with the machine. And Jo still ran.

Another “What if?” popped into her head. “What if,” she thought, “the manufacturer was wrong? What if I could go faster?” She certainly felt like she could. So she hit the up arrow, and the next thing she knew, she was still plugging away. She was close to the controls, but wait…the controls were no longer there.

The room was no longer there. Just Jo, running and running, feeling like she used to when she ran in races, but somehow feeling stronger. She had no idea where she was headed, but the world around her; it was as if she were a shooting star out in the universe somewhere. Things were flashing by her, but she had no idea what or where they were. She just kept running, her feet not even feeling like they were hitting ground, but somehow her body was propelling her forward.

Then, she did feel something underfoot. Soft, and not conducive to her running shoes. She started to feel the splash of something in her face, and tasted a salt that wasn’t just her sweat: it tasted deeper, somehow.

The world slowed down around her, and she could see…rainbows? Maybe she was just hyperventilating, or maybe her heart had exploded and she was really just dead. But she could feel her heart beating fast, even, and strong. As she slowed down a bit more, she realized she was on a beach, running where the sand and the ocean met.

Jo slowed down to a walk, catching her breath and wondering she was. This had certainly never happened to her before! And where she was: the sky was filled with rainbows, and they colored the water and sand beneath them like a stained-glass window does the inside of a chapel. She took out her earphones, and could hear the waves crash on the shore.

There was a person up ahead, and rather than wait for it to go away like she tended to do, Jo headed right towards her: She could tell it was a woman. As she got closer, she saw it was a lovely woman with kind eyes, wearing a robe that seemed as dark as time itself.

“Welcome,” the woman said. “I’m glad you found your way in, Jo.”

“In where?” Jo asked. “All I know is that one minute I was on my treadmill in a tiny room downstairs in my house, running faster than an Olympic athlete, and now I’ve wound up in a rainbow utopia.” She came up to where the woman stood and bent over, trying to catch her breath like she did at the end of a race.

“You have made it to Lemuria, Jo. And in a sense, you’ve also found your way into your own creative place.” The woman offered her a bottle of water, which Jo gladly took and proceeded to gulp down.

When Jo finished, she realized something. How did this mysterious woman know her name, or that she’d been questioning her creativity? That particular item had been feeling as gone as her running days lately. So she asked, “I’m sorry, but I don’t really know who you are, or how you know my name. Or even the bit about my creative block.”

“I’m Enchanteur, Jo, and while I know it seems a little crazy, I do know all about the creative questioning you’ve been doing lately. That’s why you’re here. I’ve brought you through a portal of your choosing–whether you know it or not–so you can finally stop questioning yourself and start creating things. Honestly, the Muses are a little tired of your whining.”

Enchanteur watched as Jo’s face changed into slightly defensive mode, then added. “Popping you onto Rainbow Beach here was the fastest way to shock your system.”

“I didn’t know anyone was really paying attention to my whining,” Jo said. She was still a little defensive, but knew that she had been a little vocal lately about not having any ideas worth writing about. She watched the rainbows play over Enchanteur’s face and hair for a little bit, and then said, “So I’m here, on Rainbow Beach…”

“In Lemuria,” Enchanteur added.

“And I’m on a creative journey?” Jo was still a little dazed, but her breathing had returned to normal, and the water had done her good. She could think straight again, and added, “So I don’t have to show up at work tomorrow?”

Enchanteur laughed. “Time here in Lemuria is not the same as it is at home. When you return, it will be like you never left. But that’s not important right now.”

She reached into her robes and pulled out a small backpack. “Here, Jo. You’ve come through your portal more prepared for an exercise class than a creative journey. You’ll need this bag and its contents: some dream seeds, wings, various other things.”

Jo took the bag from the woman and said, “Thanks, Enchanteur. I have to admit I’m still a little confused. Can you tell me where I should be going?”

“Even better, I’ll take you there,” was the response. And the two made their way up the beach, to what looked like some fairgrounds, full of music and food, all being enjoyed by lots of people.

Joanne

Clowns’ Mouths and Why I Don’t Step In Them

Oh, to wake up on New Year’s morn and be confronted with a clown or two.

These are not portals I care to be walking through, and I’ll tell you why. It goes back to before Stephen King came out with It, even.

My Dad used to paint pictures. Around the time I was born, he got it into his head that there should be a clown portrait in my room, because, you know everyone likes clowns, right? So he painted up a picture of a clown, using lots of purples in the background. A perfectly decent rendering, something made by his own hand for his child. They hung it in my room, and there it was during my early babyhood.

Except I grew to hate that clown.

I couldn’t have been that old: two or so, when I realized that there was a creepy man looking at me from the wall. A man that didn’t look like any other person I knew. Who just stared sadly at me.

It was that damn clown portrait.

So I started to scream, and cry, and eventually the portrait was taken down, then sent to my Aunt’s house, where my cousins seemed to be less bothered by the clown.

But there’s more.

I was about four, and at some Masonic Lodge picnic (my grandfather was a Mason). I was standing with my dad when a clown approached. He had candy, and wanted to give me some.

I had just learned not to take candy from strangers, even brightly dressed ones, but he insisted. Perhaps he was a little drunk and didn’t know how to back off, I don’t know. But my reaction was to hide under my dad’s lawn chair, and he finally got the message and tottered off. Some other clown came up to us later, but he got the point faster and left.

The experience was enough to reinforce my fear of clowns. By the time I read It as a teen, my attitude was, “What do you expect from a clown!?” Same when that Killer Clowns From Outer Space movie came out. And serial killer John Wayne Gacy dressing up like a clown and visiting sick kids in the hospital seems perfectly right to me.

Years later, I was riding on a commuter train, on my way home from my job. I was sitting with a woman who I considered a train buddy: when you see someone a lot, and get on and off the same stops, sometimes you strike up “commuting” friendships. This was what this was. We didn’t know too much about each other, otherwise.

For some reason, one day we began talking about things that scared us, and I mentioned clowns.

She laughed, and I asked, “What was so funny?”

“Oh,” she said. “On weekends I dress up as a clown and go to kids’ parties.”

Yikes!

But I didn’t run away from her in fear. We actually had a good laugh about it, and I felt a little better about clowns in general. A little.

But if you think I’m going to step into a clown’s mouth to start off my Twelfth Night journey, think again!

Joanne