Assembly Instructions

You’ve bought a Portal. Now you must build it.

The French, naturally, call it a Portique. They believe their young ones pass through and emerge transformed: braver. Of course, the French are mad, but peut-être (“might be”) they’re onto something, for…

The Germans see this pile of steel as a NochunerfüllteGeschwindigkeitsmaschine literally “the as-yet unrealised Velocity Machine” as if they can already see the engine of momentum that limbs and leverage will bring forth.

The Japanese obliquely refer to your purchase as a Sora no ko “air child.” For them, the structure actually disappears, becoming a superstructural meeting of sound.

Sora no ko built -

structure lost, the sky invoked:

spirit meets the squeal.

Closer to home, in Worcestershire we hold that they channel courage, while in much of Wales, Twnswr y Ddaear (Earth tuners) or Ffôr Twnio’r Ddaear (Earth’s tuning forks) hum quietly on colder mornings.

All traditions imply that the transformed will offer small gestures of gratitude, a drawing, petal, or sweaty hug. These formal gestures are believed to show appreciation for the determination you are about to bring to bear, though perhaps not for that moment when Bolt D vanishes. (into another dimension???)

That gratitude stuff frankly sounds absurd and it’s all probably nonsense, and yet… might be that you feel it?

Might be, when this Portique stands complete, something will shift.

The space inside the frame become charged with possibility, and someone small, wild, brilliant will take hold of it, disturb the balance, harness weary gravity, and swing.

Don’t let your familiarity with this greatest of all languages dull its power.

To swing is to arc above the earth, to play with that which would grind us down and to find a winding way through, like rivers finding the sea.

What you’ve bought is a Swing Frame, what you’ll build is the architecture of becoming (Sanskrit).

They’re about to pass through.

You have got Bolt D?