Class Notes #2—Crossing Thresholds

Every day is full of thresholds—from being asleep to being awake, from being at home to being in the car, from being in the car to being in the classroom. “Being” is an instructive word here, since my sense of being is affected (in subtle and not-so-subtle ways) by this constant crossing of thresholds.

Today in class I invited students to write until they had filled one page. Usually I give a time limit for writing sessions, but then some students write a sentence and spend the next five minutes tapping their erasers and staring out the window (or texting in their laps as if I can’t tell they have a phone hidden there). So filling an entire page, no matter how long it took, was a new experience for most of them.

After we wrote, I asked them to go into the hall. The classrooms around us were empty, so I asked them to take a few minutes and simply enter and exit the other rooms, paying particular attention to the subtle shifts that occurred when crossing each threshold. We met back in the classroom and I tossed my cellphone into the middle of our the circle of chairs and invited them to do the same.

So there we were.

I asked them what crossing all those thresholds felt like.

“The air smells different in some rooms.”

“It’s colder in the hall.”

“The light changes.”

“The room next door always makes me feel trapped since my most boring classes are in there.”

Then we talked about how some thresholds represent a stark contrast between qualities of experience. They offered vivid examples:

Approaching the Moda Center before a Blazer game and stepping inside where the air and energy are electric. Stepping out of an air-conditioned car into the heat of a summer afternoon. Driving to the beach and stepping from asphalt onto sand. Getting off a boat after a day on the water and feeling the ground under your feet. Going to the hospital. Stepping onto a basketball court. Entering a movie theater and sitting down with a sense of expectancy. Leaving the movie theater and stepping out to the parking lot.

Our lives are full of thresholds. Those cell phones in the middle of the circle represent a threshold that we cross dozens (hundreds?) of times a day — constantly shifting back and forth from the world around us to the world on the screen.

I suggested that as writers, a blank page is a threshold where we meet our inner experience. We cross from the external world of distraction and interaction to a quiet space where we meet ourselves. No one can fill a page for us. The page is where we meet our thoughts, where we discover the quietness that is waiting for our attention. The page reveals what we do—and don’t—have at a particular moment. It is a threshold that represents so much possibility.