trails by the highway just out of earshot of traffic
schools during breaks
those little beaches right next to ferry docks
bowling alleys
unfamiliar mcdonalds on long roadtrips
your friends living room once everybody but you is asleep
laundromats at midnight
• any target
• churches in texas
• abandoned 7/11’s
• your bedroom at 5 am
• hospitals at midnight
• warehouses that smell like dust
• lighthouses with lights that don’t work anymore
• empty parking lots
• ponds and lakes in suburban neighborhoods
• rooftops in the early morning
• inside a dark cabinet
galeries in art museums that are empty except for you
the lighting section of home depot
stairwells
•hospital waiting rooms
•airports from midnight to 7am
• bathrooms in small concert venues
I just got the weirdest feeling I swear
OK LISTEN THERE ARE REASONS FOR THIS!!!
A lot of these places are called liminalspaces - which means they are throughways from one space to the next. Places like rest stops, stairwells, trains, parking lots, waiting rooms, airports feel weird when you’re in them because their existence is not about themselves, but the things before and after them. They have no definitive place outside of their relationship to the spaces you are coming from and going to. Reality feels altered here because we’re not really supposed to be in them for a long time for think about them as their own entities, and when we do they seem odd and out of place.
The other spaces feel weird because our brains are hard-wired for context - we like things to belong to a certain place and time and when we experience those things outside of the context our brains have developed for them, our brains are like NOPE SHIT THIS ISN’T RIGHT GET OUT ABORT ABORT. Schools not in session, empty museums, being awake when other people are asleep - all these things and spaces feel weird because our brain is like “I already have a context for this space and this is not it so it must be dangerous.” Our rational understanding can sometimes override that immediate “danger” impulse but we’re still left with a feeling of wariness and unease.
Listen I am very passionate about liminal spaces they are fascinating stuff or perhaps I am merely a nerd.
I, for one, appreciate your passion for liminal spaces and thank you for explaining it to the rest of us.
“There are times where I wish people would understand that Ultimate frisbee is more than just running around catching and throwing a flying disc, but that it’s a culture, a lifestyle. The love/hate relationship, the camaraderie throughout the sport, tournament parties, and simply the little things such as dry socks, tournament food, and the extra hour of sleep from when your team has a bye make ultimate such a joy to be a part of. No words can ever express the experience of playing. At the end of the weekend, after hours upon hours and game after game of playing, after throwing your body countless times to the ground to catch a disc, after playing through rain and wind, after playing anywhere from freezing cold to three digit degree weather, after pain and soreness, all you can do is smile. When Monday rolls around and people ask you what you did, all you can answer with is I played in a frisbee tournament because they won’t understand what we actually did that weekend.”—Paige Carver (Captain of Lynx Rufus @ GCSU)
in seventh grade i liked a girl. she had blonde hair and hazel eyes and i found it hard to breathe every time she stood near me.
now, i wasn’t the only person to like this girl. she was the most sought after girl in our grade, the one every guy would kill to call his.
they tripped over each other trying to ask her out, even though it was common knowledge she had a steady boyfriend in the year below. she had to reject boys practically every other day.
it would break my heart every time i witnessed the fallout when things got ugly. boys would call her a bitch, a slut, a cunt. once her nudes were even leaked, and half the school turned against her.
i was different. not once did i ask her out or flirt with her. half the time i didn’t dare let my eyes linger on her for too long.
for a while, i pondered this. why it was common behaviour for boys to abuse girls who didn’t like them, while girls who liked girls were wrong for liking them in the first place.
one day it came to me, and it felt like a punch in the chest:
boys who like girls feel they have the right to own them.
girls who like girls feel they don’t even have the right to look at them.
