If there’s one word to describe my recent visit to New York, it’s liminal. As in, transitional, on a threshold. And I like the idea of liminal space. I like it a whole lot. It suggests that rather than thin lines to be crossed, borders can be wide enough to exist in. Crossings can drag out, and the movement from one phase to the next might run longer than the phases themselves. Liminal space is the journey. Liminal space is where the stories are.
It so happened that almost all of the friends I saw in New York were in their own liminal space. S is getting married – they had just decided two days before. Another friend has a new gig after a year of traveling, and is in her first relationship in years where the other person feels like a partner rather than just someone she’s hanging out with. E is nearing the end of a long, drawn-out breakup. She’s decided to quit teaching and pursue her art. Two others are very, very pregnant. DB’s got a new apartment and new responsibilities at work. And V put her stuff in storage and left New York on a vision quest but then moved back, and sipping tea one night on her roof looking out at the Manhattan skyline (the Empire State Building lit white) she told me she’d met the person she’s going to marry, they’re just not talking right now.
