Liminal of liminals

Liminal spaces and liminal times

A liminal space is space that’s defined by its relation to other spaces. It’s a place with no identity of its own, but rather is defined by transition between other places. That strange, noplace kind of feeling you get walking down an empty hallway? That’s because it’s a liminal space; you wouldn’t be in that hallway if you weren’t going someplace else. Bus stops, airports, stairwells- we only go to these places on the way to someplace else. They’re the inbetween places of life.

My high school had this hallway that was the most liminal space I have ever experienced. Hallways are like that anyway, and school hallways especially so. We all have this weirdly shared experience that we all remember of rushing to class, walking quickly but not running down the hallway before the bell rings because the ancient Algebra teacher who should have retired decades ago gets a sadistic pleasure out of telling off late students. And school is entirely defined in its relation to the future- teachers telling you how you’ll need to know the quadratic formula or Shakespeare in the future. Whether or not you actually need it is irrelevant.

But this one particular Hall was different.

The Hall connected the main hallway to the cafeteria, and had an exit to the outside. But there were other ways to the cafeteria, and other ways in and out of the building. There were no classrooms here either; frankly, it was hard to understand why the Hall existed at all.

When you walked through those heavy double doors, the sound of adolescent chaos in the other halls was almost shut out entirely. A vague muffled noise would seep through, but it sounded like you were cut off from the world. It was like when your neighbors are arguing through the wall and you know something’s going on on the other side but you also know that you’re not supposed to be a part of it.

Unlike the hard tile floors everywhere else in the building, the Hall was carpeted. Far from feeling “homey,” however, the gritty, worn carpet somehow made the hall feel vaguely alien due to the difference in the sound and feel of your footsteps as you walked down it.

Going from the smell of sweat and industrial cleaning products in the other halls to the smell of musty carpet and dusty air was always jarring. It wasn’t overpowering, but it was different. It added to the Hall’s otherworldly atmosphere. It felt disconnected from everything going on elsewhere in the building.

One wall of this hallway was entirely made of windows. The Hall was in the front of the building, so from there you could see out into the parking lot. Walking through there on a nice day almost felt like taking a short trip outside- almost. It was definitely inside, but it was less inside than inside. It was not outside though- one could see the silent wind moving the trees but without the sound or feel of it on your skin, it didn’t feel real.

Because of the windows, the Hall was closer in temperature to the outside. It would be about 5 degrees cooler than the rest of the building in the morning, and about 5 degrees warmer in the afternoon. The surreal feeling of not being inside or outside but somewhere in between permeated every corner of the Hall.

One evening, I had to stay late at school. I don’t remember why, but the why’s not important. I decided to wait for my ride home in the Hall. It was late enough in the year and in the day that the sun was beginning to sink in the sky, though it wasn’t twilight yet. Only half of the lights in the Hall were on, so it was hard to place whether it was light or dark. A ray of sunlight was illuminating, of all things, an air duct, as dust motes swirlied down to the floor.

As I sat on the dirty teal carpet in the semi-dark, silent Hall, not quite inside but not outside, seeing the sun begin to sink out to the west, I thought about how... unsure I was. About my life, present and future. I wanted to go to college, since that was supposed to be the way to get ahead in life. But I was also tired of school and was unsure of the truth of what I was being told about college. I also didn’t have any real promising career prospects without it, so I didn’t really know what I was going to do after all this. Everything I was doing seemed to be about preparing for the future, and yet the future was a blank space in my mind. I was pointing towards some sort of future that I couldn’t even identify. My future was a looming reality, but was also nothing nowhere and at no time.

Looking back on that moment now, adolescence seems like a liminal time in life. As a child, childhood is all you know, so it seems stable. As an adult, adulthood is simply going about your day. But adolescence is about the transition between the two. And yet, how are we even supposed to navigate that transition when we can’t even possibly comprehend what the destination is?

That moment, being in a transitional place of a transitional place during a transitional time of my life- that’s the liminal of liminals