"Write about a worldly place that is a threshold for you."

I know the thresholds when I am there but not when I am gone. I wrote a college admissions essay about one such threshold, an abandoned freeway in Temecula, CA, that cut only a quarter mile into a field before its abrupt end; I stood there one late afternoon and tried to shout so I could give a story to Ryan and Peregrine Mag. It was worth the admissions essay because I have an issue in which my vocal cords choke, freeze, whathaveyou, any time I try to yell. When I was a kid jolted up by night-terrors, I would have to spend ages in bed telling myself it must be okay to scream for help, I should do it. I couldn't; going to my mom's bedside, I could only wake her up with a shy shove, as I could never get anything more than a hoarse whisper. Today I am a bit freer- I can shout if I am relaxed, happy, and comfortable. At that abandoned freeway, a bizarre stright scar in the side of a valley field, I watched as the intersection went so uncharacteristically dry- lights blinked yellow, green, red, timed things, and no cars approached them- and the sun began to set northwest over Murrieta. Crows gathered on the defunct streetlamps, and looking at the sun and the murder I thought about Apollo, carelessly. I'm describing this all quickly, as I find it hard to get lost in the memory anymore. I turned around in search of the moon, my true confidant, shocked to find her hanging full in the exact same position- relative to the horizon- as the sun. Their beams could've collided. I took some pictures from that day, amd somehow my memory has carried an unusually strong image of the scene from all different angles; my memory has not held on to the emotions of that day. Still I know that was a threshold- I did wind up hollering, even if it still sounded tight. Now, though, if I went back, everything would be different. A company obliterated the valley by removing what made us a valley, that being our keen awareness of the mountains always looming over us; they built a housing development, massive thing, over that field. Being so small, nobody can see over that suburban sprawl and up to our protectors that saved us from so many wildfires.
I can hardly tell one threshold from another. Someone crowned a streetlamp with a cone, concentrating its light into a stark circle rather than letting it diffuse. Was that not a confession booth? I remember observing it, carefully, like the light could cut. How late was it... maybe 12am? Not horrible, but entirely lonely. I didn't step in the beam, but I did take a picture of it. Another confession booth- moonlight through any window, specifically any window to a room I sleep in. I'm shy, scared, and too vulnerable confiding in Selene. I shrink away when I can, give an awkward hello. Confession booths- light in night, in my case- are as good a threshold as a door. I get vulnerable, the frontier I hide from most. Everything else I'll rush like a bull.
Thresholds, non-exhaustive, forget-me-not, I-do-not-have-a-creative-approach-to-this:
- Machine-cut keys
- A mountain in view
- Vale Forest; the dirt-bike track carved by kids in two different neighborhoods; a depression and short bridge slid quiet and shy under a freeway
- Cul-de-sacs
- Paychecks
- A new friend's old car
- Family gatherings of any kind, including (or even especially) casual dinners
- Plant nurseries, anywhere; embracing caring for life besides your own or anybody immediately obvious
- Cardboard boxes
- Beds, bedrooms
- Knives, however they arrive
- Scissors, aimed with creation, or, perfection via removal, or, removing till there is nothing to remove ("Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." orginally written by Antoine de Saint-Exupery and paraphrased by every bathroom-sink barber)
- Sex, regrettably, is always a threshold, for better, for worse- is that too ephemeral an answer?
- Talismans, meaning and intent designated to some inanimate material thing,
- Questions proposing new modes of communication- this too is ephemeral (leads to material, i.e. letters)
- Parents' doors (physical) (car, bedroom, bathroom, house)
- Light switches
- The bizarre and dark confessionalist nature that is inspired during [my] birthday(s) (personally, re: mom, second ex)
- Couches and bodies other than yours on those couches
- Professors' offices
- Lamp posts decorated in flyers
- Flower bouquets on public transit (both held or abandoned)
- Speaking. Ephemeral (leads)

"Write about what ways writing plays a role in your life- why do you like it? Is it hard? What's your relationship with it?"

It's very hard. Writing is the one thing that I have been consistently praised for in my surviving memory. There's been a certain compliment that comes with this, a compliment that can't carry much- if any- malice, and holds no secret bigotry, and yet remains sore. Susan Sontag penned why: "It's not 'natural' to speak well, eloquently, in an interesting articulate way. People living in groups, families, communes say little- have few verbal means. Eloquence- thinking in words- is a byproduct of solitude, deracination, a heightened painful individuality." The whole quote doesn't get much merit, as most of the oldest stories we have could've only survived because of their communal creation and defusion. I fixate on the last sentence, because unlike Homer I know I have grown up entirely alone. I've had roommate-siblings- kids I lived with for about five years before fleeing- I've had close friends. I've been around people, make no mistake, but that's not community, is it? I call them roommates because we were never siblings, all three made sure of it. Beyond seventh grade each friend I had was no more than an acquaintance to me, with only one pedestaled 'best' friend to be near. Perhaps some of this is my fault: I projected a lonely image and people eventually believe it's what you want, no matter how much you beg, invite, plea, and establish that's never been true. My therapist first proposed autism within me as I told him I never understood the intimacy my acquaintances believed we had; perhaps some of this is my fault.
What I write is often mundane. In ninth grade I carried a notebook with me non-stop and wrote pages upon pages worth of plot elaboration of a dream I'd had, and that's all the fantasy I've explored. Everything else is something unattractive to escapism, a complete denial of it for myself and my characters, if any. I much prefer that. Mundanity, the profane, Bruce Springsteen's America and the one I've stayed in, the metaphors of my childhood that never became metaphors until I flatlined on what the child felt like, conversation, failed efforts or successful dives, those are largely my inspirations. Poetry and writing [with the intention of writing] have an archival taste to me, both in my favorites and how I run with it. (For this reason, one of my favorite poems is a private occasion in a public place by David Antin. It is very long and the copies online are guarded by paywalls and I'm losing it but I do not feel like transcribing it.. so I scanned it. It was, like several if not most of his poems, a practice in "poem-talk," or an improvised performance before a live audience which weaves in multiple narratives and memories at once. I read it out loud, once, to an Introduction to Poetry class in college. It fit the prompt so perfectly, which was merely "read a poem out loud".) I'm confessional by nature when I write; it goes back to loneliness breeding my so-called eloquence- I confess, and often plainly, so I cannot be avoided, so what or who or why I write cannot be avoided. There's two poems (or pieces) I've read today alone that incapsulate the archival qualities of writing (particularly poetry): What I Do by Ellery Akers (begins bottom of page 25), and a segment from Ion Caraion's The Syllable Hatter, which I read within a book called "Romanian Writers on Writing" and can't find transcribed online... I've done so myself here. Caraion's piece is to me an embodiment of certain sections of this interview between poets Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee and Najwan Darwish, one which has informed my own understanding of "true poetry" or whatever in relation to "risk". Caraion's piece is largely about the risk of a poet existing as a poet, or existing and then acting as a poet, and makes mention of he, a laborer, "is one born out of historical confrontation, and one who acknowledges that confrontation, opens up to it," and later "does not deny the place of the other in that confrontation." It perhaps isn't a flawless example, but it's the one I have on this Saturday morning.
I just came back from scanning Antin's poem and I'm not sure where I was going. Caraion is a man who experienced exploitation in the name of so-called development, and left unpretentious. There's a severe grandiosity to his piece here, but it's not an illusion of utter perfection as even a possibility for a poet. Clumsy, exiled, painstakenly screwed in conveying most things but not all. There's an effort and within his effort an archive of labor, mundanity, humanity. Who knows. It's all archival, writing, even fiction. You live a life and particularly as a writer you watch other people life a life or lives. I once told a teacher I think I'm here to just be an observer of all things and he told me that was sad.
Something worth knowing about the way I write is I am a follower of ephermera- publishing and "finished products" worry me; I follow epheremal philosophies out of fear, largely, and awe. Bit religious. I am constantly moving... rarely is something ever "done". It (the knowledge that things will be published, unupdatable to most readers, and that one day death will ensure no updates or tuning whatsoever) is something I need to get a grip on and accept, but in the nature of websites and zines I can change anything I want, and I will.