Leaving the half-light
Something has shifted. Like an expansion of the air, the opening of a door leading from an antechamber to a much bigger room beyond. I am hesitating on the threshold but barely lingering, for I know I have no choice but to cross it. I am, in fact, already doing just that.
I am afraid. Not frightened-for-my-life petrified, for there is no danger in the journey. To the contrary, all the signs are telling me that I am in for the ride of a lifetime, and it’s getting started right here and now. But I am afraid nonetheless.
The Sweden residency that I have been looking forward to for months, is finally happening. There is something surreal about it all so far, like finding yourself in front of a famous monument and trying to marry its true scale with both the miniature leaflet photographs and your feverish anticipation.
Crossing into Sweden (via the famous ‘Bron’ Bridge from Copenhagen to Malmö) also feels symbolic for crossing into uncharted territory. My outward journeys tend to run parallel to my inner developments, usually facilitating and sometimes enhancing them, but in this case the physical journey feels like a miniature version of a much broader, deeper inner shift.
Running up to the Björköby residency I have experienced an undeniable pull of something resembling a very strong current. The launching of STROOM had something to do with it, because we were stepping out into the world with both the book and the Sapling collaboration ablaze. The fact that next fall, Jurgen and I will also be publishing an ambitious new children’s book together (the contact’s with a trustworthy publishing house is being drawn up as we speak), is another element that provides push. In fact, part of the Björköby residency will be devoted to working on this new book. All of this provides perspective into the future, and therefore momentum. It’s quite a change from my years of working on the same manuscript over and over again, only to have it refused after months of waiting, and return to my solitary desk for another round of rewriting. But welcome and uplifting as these projects and changes all may be, they are not the source of the current I feel pulling at me. To the contrary, they seem mere manifestations of it, small examples of something much, much larger and very powerful coursing underneath, and breaching the surface now and then.
It’s the vastness and strength of this deeper current that frightens me. A little. For both the tempo and the scope of how I have worked and lived so far are about to change. In a good way, that much is clear. But also in a definite way. And there is no knowing what that experience will truly be like.
I have been looking forward to this tipping point for a very long time, in a way I have been working towards it all my life. At some point I had accepted the fact that it would never arrive. Now that is has, though, I feel I am asked to leave behind much of what I know and was accustomed to. This sounds a lot like my previous experience in reaching the plateau, but it feels profoundly different. I am asked to close the books on an old story and move into something bigger, bolder and quite unknown.
There is no refusing this call. I am stepping over the threshold, leaving the antechamber and its half-light, which I so very often found confining yet at times also comforting. There is no point in looking back. From where I’m standing now, the only way to go is on.
