#liminal spaces
Went to my school’s ChemE building to meet up with some classmates to study for our midterm on a Sunday. Did I learn chemistry? Yes. More importantly, I learned that the ChemE building is a liminal space!
I walked all over the building and discovered many narrow, repeating corridors just to find the entrance to the classroom and exit where there was light. The first floor is friendly, while the second shifts into a place I’d expect to be killed in a horror film. There are no windows on the second floor.
The Empty Room
“Have you ever been in a completely empty room?” I ask my mother.
I came home today, later than normal for a Wednesday. I had a staff meeting that was held two and a half hours after my last class let out. So I brought my keyboard and my story copy and decided, what the hell I’ll type a little.
When I get into a story writing mood, when I get into a vibe, I feel something change. I suddenly feel very small and not so aware of things around me. Aware enough as a woman of course, but not entirely aware. Aware enough that I can move my things if someone is trying to get by. Aware enough if someone asks me a question. Aware enough that I sometimes catch bits of conversation. But not really aware.
“I usually feel this way on the third or fourth floor of [my college’s administration building]”, I say to her, “Waiting for the elevator. The way it’s structured is, there’s the main hallway, then just past the stairs there’s this little jetty, and then at the end of the jetty there’s another tiny hallway, and that’s where the elevator is. There usually isn’t anybody waiting for the elevator on the third or fourth floor. There’s not a lot of classes there anymore.”
When I get into a writing vibe - usually happens when I’m typing my copy, but it can easily happen when I’m free-writing, or writing the copy - I feel something change. I feel like I’m in a completely empty room.
“There’s an empty room in my heart,” I said to Mom, “When I’m in this room, I feel very aware of my characters and scenes. I feel very close to them, like I know what they’re feeling, like I almost feel what they’re feeling.”
And I feel that way, too, when I’m waiting for the elevator on the third or fourth floor.
When I get into a writing vibe, I enter a perpetual liminal space. I become increasingly aware of everything emotional that happens there. And I feel very small. But that’s okay. Because my characters are usually there with me. When I’m done writing for the day, they leave the room, but I don’t necessarily leave the room. Which leaves me feeling unsettlingly introspective. Nothing emotional is going on in the room, so there’s nothing to be aware of, so I feel like I’m feeling nothing. Which is kind of scary and disturbing. I feel like I need to cry but there’s nothing to cry about.
I was able to pause the liminal space for the staff meeting, and possibly while driving home, but while eating dinner, I was still in the empty room. And I felt very detached from everything. Like I am when I’m in a writing vibe. But since there was nobody in the Room with me, I was left looking inward.
I enjoy my time in the Empty Room. Having the room makes my stories more emotional. Everyone in the room becomes aware, very much aware, of what they’re feeling. But I do not like to be alone in the Empty Room. Because then things become frighteningly real. And yet not real at all.
A partial list of liminal times (and places)
-The end of the day in the summer when the streetlights turn on but the sun hasn’t set yet and the fireflies start coming out and the cicadas’ buzzing reaches fever pitch
-10 am on the first Tuesday of the month, when the sound of the tornado sirens reverberates off the buildings in downtown Chicago
-All night on the ocean, with or without clouds or storms or moonlight
-Just before a thunderstorm hits, when the sky turns green and everything becomes eerily still as if the entire world is underwater
-The darkest part of the night, after the moon has set, while you’re driving snowy highways through the north woods
-When the wind changes in late autumn and you can smell the first snow on it, crisp and cold
-Anytime after sunrise but before the fog has burned off, when anything that moves in front of you looks shadowy and distorted
-The silence and collectively held breath in a crowded sports bar during the highest stakes moment of a high stakes game
-Civil twilight is always a liminal time, really, but especially in the West when the shapes of mountains just start to fade in or out of existence on the horizon
when the sky is dark and stars are scattered up above us,
when the night air is cool, the wind nothing but a faint whisper,
and the clouds have gone to hide. leaving the heavens exposed to naïve eyes,
that is when i feel at one.
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will you promise to stay until the sun comes up, until the sky black and littered with stars turns to the comforting orange and yellow of a new day?
you say yes, and i ask you to promise again tomorrow.
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mind overrun with unnerving delusions, unable to comprehend realistic conclusions.
they’re out to get me, but nobody will listen. nobody believes someone in this condition.
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a slave to paranoia
i draw the line but its always crossed. maybe when i’m dead i’ll be able to think more clearly.
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Feeling down? Remember one thing ☝️
considering how obvious it is conceptually, im surprised there isn’t more “liminal space” horror media that has like. anything to say about the sort of rampant capitalist expansion + subsequent economic crash that leads to seemingly endless, samey public spaces like malls, resorts, and parking lots being abandoned and empty. The feeling of being the only living thing within a structure that seems, on the surface, built for people, but in reality expands into infinity in an inescapably banal maze of careless, empty rooms. There’s no need for a monster, the environment itself both desperately needs you and wants you to die
Bedrooms are NOT “Liminal” spaces. They are the OPPOSITE, they are high-reality PROXIMAL spaces where the veil pools thick, acting as an ANCHOR for the dreaming mind.
Why do I hate that you’re right?
