TRANSITIONS 2 2012
Synopsis
Transitions is a forum for ideas concerned with crossings and transformations, universal or local, real or imaginary, expressed in article, story or poem. Although each writer explores a subject specific to them, they also address universal themes. An author of a memoir for instance, looks at her journey from poetry to prose, an archaeological project discovers the past in the present, a local explorer finds Shangri-la along our own coastline and a life model has intimations of the transition from mortal to immortal! That’s not all. In this edition two specific qualities of transitions, both related to Folkestone, have emerged. The first is ‘liminality’, that space or state between one place and another or between two worlds, as Matthew Arnold has described, one dead, the other powerless to be born. As an inbetween, threshold place Folkestone itself may be described as liminal. We look at what that means to us in a wider context. The second is the fountain, reminding of transience. If the archetype of the fountains symbolises the ever renewing source of life and soul, its reality as seen in the Folkestone harbour fountain is ‘interactive ‘, and in the town’s saint, Eanswythe, the spring’s miraculous legend lives on. Above and beyond this Transitions embraces migration and change as integral parts of our humanity, acknowledging that despite change there is also continuum. The movement which defines and transforms us as well as the elements in the wind of the wave that breaks on the shore in a dying crest, is an energy which never dies. The water of a river we step into at the same place may be different water, but it is still the same river. Things may change in the blink of an eye but God never blinks. Transitions celebrates the transformation of the ordinary into the extraordinary, existence as flow and movement. Whatever we do, whatever defines us, it takes a process of changing from one bodily state or thought to another to pass on to a new doing or thinking - transitions our very breath. We would like to thank our contributors who have dared breath and given change and transformation voice! |
Stories by Maryanne Grant-Traylen writing as Annie Webb from TRANSITIONS 2
Inbetween Room
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