Lance Schaubert

Two quick things:

1. I have begun production on a new film shoot with the fabulous Mark Neuenschwander of 9artphoto. We will turn it into a novella of words and pictures, first on a new blog and then (hopefully) on some sort of mixed-media iPad app. I took the left picture on set and the right picture is my wife’s illumination of the script:

2. Also, you may have seen the following symbol floating around on my site or Pinterest or Twitter:

}{

This is a two-fold symbol for me (sorry, bad pun).

The first is an hour-glass, but that’s meaningless until Gergia finds a publisher.
The second is a threshold, the exact point of intersection between two worlds:

everything from this world } crosses a threshold to { everything from that world

You know I love thresholds not just because of their importance for fantasy, faerie and sci-fi literature, but because of the truth they  represent in life. Thresholds are meetings of two minds, two bodies, two hearts. Thresholds emerge when we find unity in diversity, when we try to relate to one another through what we have in common. People who frequent thresholds actually bring people together. They’re peacemakers and diplomats and ambassadors (like my Alma Mater’s mascot), because they keep a foot in both worlds to sympathize with all grievances.

As for the symbolic side, thresholds are as numerous as the waters on earth, separating the deep from the highlands. Doorways are thresholds between the inside and outside. Then there’s graduation stages. Fireplaces, especially the kind with a built-in escape hatch for the ashes. Dumpsters—particularly if you wait long enough inside one, just ask The Little Toaster, who was also a sort of threshold. Ink wells. Subways and train stations (like Platform 9¾). The wardrobe in Narnia. I could go on and on but both this symbol and the truth behind this symbol mean the world to me.

I mean that literally:

this world}{that world

In the words of Bill Nye the Science Guy, now you know.