Liminal Spaces.
“where we are betwixt and between the familiar and the completely unknown. There alone is our old world left behind, while we are not yet sure of the new existence.” -Richard Rohr.
We pack up, hook up and hit the road. It’s moving day. There is a buzz about us all. An excitement for the newness that’s coming. The constant new adventure that is our life now. The new people, the new town, the new markets, the new playgrounds, the new skate parks, the new swimming holes, the new layout of the place we pull up in. Finding our bearings again. There is part of it that is all new and there is also a part of it that is an experience on repeat. It’s just the faces change, the prices change, the smells and the tastes change.
It has become obvious to me that the new experience is only new because of this space in between. Moving day. We are 4 bodies flying through space between one place and the next. Often internet drops out, phone service drops out, the noise and business of everything drops out and we are left floating in a liminal space. Transitioning between what was, and what’s to come. I think it was Alan Watts that said something along the lines of “Listening to music is actually you listening to the space between each note” that is how the melody is formed. I’ve probably just butchered the hell out of his life’s works (Alan, sincerest apologise if I have), but you get what I mean. If it was just one big long note constantly playing, listening to that wouldn’t be anywhere near the experience that it is to move from note to note, feeling the ups and downs of the melody, not really predicting what will come next just being with the music where it is at. Riding a note or in the space between notes.
That is how life feels to me right now. I mean sure, I can worry about where we will be tomorrow, how much money we have, I certainly worry if we are running low on food or god forbid- nappies! I can cause myself all sorts of suffering through my mind. But if I lived constantly in the minds narrative, to me, that feels like playing one long fucking E-Minor that just kept humming and humming and humming. It gets pretty tiring, pretty quickly.
The liminal space between our campsites, for me, is the gap between the notes. It is kind of forced upon me. I can’t do jack about shit. I can’t online shop, I can’t podcast, I can’t network, or send emails. I am sat in transition. I can reflect backwards, I can dream forwards, I can play in the realm of my mind, but I cannot ‘do’ anything but BE and WATCH.
a very real visual of my liminal space somewhere in outback QLD, Australia.
Sometimes I sit bitter AF as the pressure to get to the next place builds. A bitterness that my own mind has created. I remind myself often that it doesn’t matter how much pressure and thought I put into it, we cannot get there any quicker. We are not supposed to. And in wanting to am I actually trying to bypass this space, this void. This nothingness between the notes. Why do I want to rush past it? Is it because if I am not ‘doing’ something then really I am nobody for this time? If I am not connecting and networking in this space then I am not rememberable? If I am not studying or learning in this space then I am wasting time? So many uncomfortable thoughts. So many issues the mind creates to avoid just being in the gap. 6 months I have been doing this now and I can say the liminal space is getting easier, in fact sometimes I look forward to it. And maybe the buzz of moving day, the excitement I feel is actually because I know I am moving into the transitional space where I get to just be. Maybe it has nothing to do with the new place we will be arriving at soon and the new adventures that await. Although if that new place wasn’t there, then this space in between wouldn’t be here either.
Now to get all mystical and philosophical. Coz what’s the point of all this if I don’t right?! haha I think about how this translates to life?
Where are you playing one long boring note to avoid the liminal space?
Do you notice the liminal spaces? I mean they are there, it is human nature, we are not machines, we move through our own rhythmic natural cycles, so they are there, but you may not even see it, or realise you are in one. I surely didn’t, blinded by my own frustration and suffering. I saw a long boring drive in a car where I was trapped and forced to do nothing.
Where are you busying yourself through the liminal space to avoid whatever it is you are feeling?
Are you in a liminal space and making it mean some big story about yourself because you cannot surrender to just being there? That is when I find my bitterness is highest. When I cannot accept the space and want to control the timing of when it is over.
The world still goes around, the people still do their things, the business’s still open. the flowers still blossom and there will still be a sun up, and sun down. But all of those things have their own transitional spaces also. It’s just not you. I mean how wonderful would it be if everyone’s ‘gap’ between the notes was in unison?! A world in hibernation and then a world blossoming all at the same time? Wonderful or chaotic, I am unsure.
Maybe your liminal space is in the traffic jam after school drop off when you are forced to sit. Maybe your liminal space is on the train commute to work? Perhaps its in a waiting room where the practitioner is running late and you have been forced to wait. Maybe it is a larger cycle like; in between jobs or in between long term relationships.
You know when you give birth? and there is that transitional moment between contractions and pushing? There is a very defined space in between. It may be fleeting but it is there. You cannot rush that space, you cannot control anything about it. You cannot decide mentally that you are going to move from one to the other, and you certainly can’t skip that transition either. One has to end for the next to begin. What happens in that space? Is it mutation? Is it evolution? Is it transformation? Is it an ending of the person you were, ready to be the next version of yourself? Is it just a rest stop to rejuvenate yourself before the next big note chimes.
Anyway big thoughts and this is deep enough for today. I hope you some peace in your own liminal space, however that looks for you.
I’m going to go sit and stare out the window.
The next notes almost here.
Amy x