On a Cape Breton Beach 2018 – Alexandra Lucas

One Small Step

Thresholds are interesting in themselves. They are the gatekeepers of entries and exits from where we live in the present to somewhere else in our future. They have an architecture all their own.

Depending on what lies across it, a threshold can bring feelings of exhilaration or terror. Think about stepping through the door of a plane at 30,000 feet even when parachutes are secure. It’s that moment of crossing, stepping through change from one place or state to another that seems to defy space and time itself.

Commonplace is such a threshold for me. It is a life-crossing and a map-making expedition through past and future.

Some of the things I want to explore:

• Writing about the world as I see it and imagine it in short stories, poetry, and a novel.
• Playing with new ways of making art through different surfaces and media.
• Lassoing the family history information and assembling a book for print.
• Organizing and labelling all the photographs — negatives and prints — so they can be easily found and identified by those who will eventually inherit them.
• Trying many new ideas to make my lifestyle healthier, more interesting, and more fulfilling.

I think of it like a gap year at the other end of life. True, it might be a couple of decades, but it might be much shorter. It’s best to travel light — some bootscraping from the past and a bit of bootstrapping into the future.

It’s a bit daunting to be honest, but now that I’ve found the  Wokingham Borough Council fitness videos  on YouTube, I’m feeling rather fearless.

Perhaps there will even be some ballroom dancing along the way — or not.