Liminal Space

Liminality -- from the Latin word limen, meaning "threshold." Liminal space. The space between. Transitional space.

I love to travel. I love seeing new places, experiencing new adventures.

But I find that so often the speed of modern travel (namely, airplanes) does not give me the liminal space I need in order to fully disengage from one location and prepare myself to enter fully into another location.

I notice this most especially when traveling from one country to another, especially when the two countries involve entirely different languages and cultures. I don't want to romanticize those three-month journeys in days of yore, when people had to take ships from America to Africa or to Asia. However, those long, long days on the journey must have provided some breathing room for the mind to adjust from leaving one shore, and all that it entails, and then giving the passenger time to become ready (eager, even) to land on the awaiting shore.

For all my love of travel, I find I have to create my own period of liminal space, a buffer of time and quiet, so that I can readjust to my life at home after a trip away (even if it was just to a different city, not a different country). I mull over where I've just been. I sit in my kitchen and drink coffee, and write a little, and neglect to take my phone ringer off "silent," so that I can process the in-between-ness of my thoughts. And I gradually slip-slide from the liminal space back into the life that has not changed at all, really, since the last time I was in it.



[photo credit: Travis Ruse]