The Portal
You have probably passed by this house many times and indeed, it is not alone in having an ornate entrance way, in fact the very next house to this one has the same designed gateway into its yard.
Perhaps it was the light or the simple calm of the neighbourhood that caught my eye as I drove my here yesterday and photographed this interesting scene.
In so many ways our lives are marked and defined by the portals and gateways through which we pass. Some other physical locations while others are time portals and still others are revelations in our own personal quest for awareness. The fascination with these markers is that no matter what form they take once you pass through there is no means to return, your life has changed with the passage of time and experience that have moved you forward or beyond the point from which you originated. You must recall the great gate way that affords entrance into some place of importance to you, and think how your life changed when you made the decision or accepted your fate and went through that marking point either in time or location.
This gate seems little used, a faint sidewalk can be made out through it but it has seen little traffic through the years so there is to me something inordinately inviting about such a place. Beyond
this gate is the unknown and it is the pursuit of the unknown that will
define what is and will be. Some times when you are looking around the Internet
you will come to sites that have a gateway, a portal, an entranceway that will change
how you think and will modify what you will know.Ensign on the other hand deliberately is without an opening or welcome page but you open the site right on the front page. This was a conscious decision to have the visitor sudden completely immersed in the site without a superfluous page explaining where the visitor was going. When the site was being made it was decided that this was an experience that would not have a portal or gateway other then the frontpage which is in itself a sort of gateway but a more of a revolving door. Now that brings up an entirely different image.
I have always wondered about the philosophical importance or underlying message that is part of the concept of the revolving doors that once were so popular in major department stores and office buildings. The revolving door had as a part of the design the idea that your visit was indeed temporary and you would not only come in but also go out. I can recall my very first encounters with such a door as a small child and how that is precisely what happened to me, I went in and the force of others brought me right around more then once so that I was trapped in this rotating entranceway not going in or out, but there in limbo between the two. Most unsettling, but it was interesting that my mother understood my terror and comforted my tears after being rescued after several rotations.
Think of an entrance way as a point of entry, a location in time, space or emotion through which the passage is one way, for even if you reenter, you will have been changed and so will what is on the other side.