Cracked Realities: Embracing Imperfections as Portals to New Worlds

Imagine a crack.

A carefully scratched jagged line in polished stone.

A peeled and stained curl in a formica desktop.

A crumbling split in dusty concrete at your feet.

For some people cracks cause anxiety. They are a blemish. Something to be filled and corrected. But for others they can be expressive, even artistic. A person might put gold foil in them to highlight their very nature and embrace the broken, transforming a flaw into an attraction.

But a crack is a glimpse. It is not a full fissure. For that we need something else. A portal.

Imagine a blue door. Bright, luminescent, almost neon when you were near them, because of course they sense you and respond. They never touch the ground. They hover 16” in the air in the darkness between two houses, stuck in the shadows, glowing blue but never illuminating anything around them. The light is internal, drawing you in like a blue blackhole. It is obviously a portal. Why not go through? How could you refuse?

You find yourself in a gap of Liminal Space. You are in between. Liminal Spaces can be physical (like a doorway), emotional (like a divorce), or metaphorical (like a decision). This portal happens to be all three.

This can be unsettling for some people. They may feel a sense of disorientation or a loss of sense of place, as these spaces lack clear markers of identity or ownership.

These are the cracks in the Layers, the Doors we pass through in life, the ones recorded in the Book of Findings visible through the Spyglass, and tread by Those Who Left. But that’s getting ahead of ourselves and for another time in the future. You don’t need to concern yourself with that right now.

All you need to know is that Portals lead to Liminal Spaces, and that is where Wonder hides, and Wonder is the seed of Imagination.