But perhaps scholars don’t capitalize words just because of the shapes they make on the page. It is at the moments when the doors open, when things flow between the A dividing point between here and there, us and them, mundane and magical. My father-who is a true scholar and not just a young lady with an ink pen and a series of things she has to say-puts it much better: “If we address stories as archaeological sites, and dust through their layers with meticulous care, we find at some level there is always a doorway. They lead to Faerie, to Valhalla, Atlantis and Lemuria, Heaven and Hell, to all the directions a compass could never take you, to elsewhere. There aren’t as many of them as there used to be.īut you still know about Doors, don’t you? Because there are ten thousand stories about ten thousand Doors, and we know them as well as we know our names. Or maybe you’ve never so much as glimpsed a Door in your life. Maybe, if you’re one of those fanciful persons who find their feet running toward unexpected places, you’ve even walked through one and found yourself in a very unexpected place indeed.
Maybe you’ve even seen one for yourself, standing half-ajar and rotted in an old church, or oiled and shining in a brick wall.
You don’t even know my name (it’s January Scaller so now I suppose you do know a little something about me and I’ve ruined my point).īut you know what it means when you see the word Door. You can’t see the scars that twist and knot across my skin. You don’t know a thing about me you can’t see me sitting at this yellow-wood desk, the salt-sweet breeze riffling these pages like a reader looking for her bookmark. When you see that word, I imagine a little prickle of familiarity makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.
There-look how tall and proud the word stands on the page now, the belly of that D like a black archway leading into white nothing. I suspect I should capitalize that word, so you understand I’m not talking about your garden-or common-variety door that leads reliably to a white-tiled kitchen or a bedroom closet.
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