Portal is a Medieval Latin word meaning gate or entry way. If used in the medical context, it means a “place where a drug enters or leaves the system.” The entryway to big cathedrals were considered portals and the imposing, scary, fear of God vibe was purposeful. The word has some history to it.

Getting away from the (yawn) etymology, the term portal does seem to elevate a space you go into and come out from. But the portals we’re talking about here have more than penises, vaginas, assholes or places where poop or in-laws enter and exit in mind. They are metaphorical crossroads to a better or (possibly) crappier life. It can represent hope or hell. In the service of art & entertainment, the portal is more a magical door and less a scientific anomaly. Go ask Alice.

We’ve been living with these doorways in stories for a while. Is it a cheat? Or lazy writing? The portal is now ubiquitous to so many plot lines. There would be no real fun to Rick & Morty or Star Vs. The Forces of Evil without them. Isn’t Star Wars’ hyperspace just another sort of portal to rapidly move the action from here to way the hell across the universe? It’s a trope and an old one at that. I have fallen prey to it myself in a story I’m completing development on with Jocelyn Duke.

Would Stargate have done as well and birthed (yet another hole reference) so many spin-offs if it had been called Starhole or Stardoor? I’m going to say no. However, I feel like it really got across this big idea of being able to fold time & space in a very elegant way. If you didn’t see this film, here are the board stokes. The Egyptians were visited by an alien culture who has this technology to do just that and helped them build the pyramids and bla, bla, bla, bla, bla. And than the Americans show up and it’s fucking Pandora’s box. You’ve heard this before in some story, in some conspiracy, in some alternative history of the earth. But like the multiverse, it’s an understood & excepted concept.

I don’t know why I’ve been sitting around pondering holes. There used to be this poet that would show up for the poetry slams at the Green Mill in Chicago. He would do the same poem every time.

You’re born from a hole
You live in a hole
And when you die
They put you in a hole

Sure, it wasn’t great art, but you get the idea. Now I have to go to smoke some cannabis out of a hole…I mean a bowl.