Threshold:
1) The sill of a doorway.
2) The entrance to a house or building.
3) Any place or point of entering and beginning.
4) In psychological or physiological terms - the point at which a stimulus is of sufficient intensity to begin to produce an effect.
Also called "limen" - hence the term "liminal" - which looks like a word that wants to be a palindrome but doesn't quite make it. And the reason I am thinking of that is because I just uploaded a homemade video on 20th century musical/rhythmic techniques which included the term non-retrogradable rhythms. Basically rhythmic palindromes.
Anyway, that lady in the video I just uploaded looked tired. And, that's me. And, it feels like I am on a threshold or, as I discussed with a friend today, at the top of a rollercoaster which is about to be either exhilarating or terrifying or both. It feels like the world is at a threshold. And, this liminal space is both exhilarating and terrifying and everything is rubbing up raw and too close to us and yet everything is also too far away and fuzzy and we can't touch it. Like that lady in the Zoom video who is me and also isn't me. I read an article the other day that described that weird feeling of socializing on video chat (Zoom, FaceTime, etc.) which highlights both absence and presence all at once. We are both absent and present to each other these days in wildly intense ways (see above - the stimulus is of sufficient intensity to begin to produce and effect). But, aren't we always both absent and present to each other?
I feel like a veil has been lifted and brought down all at once between me and my fellow humans. The suffering that people are experiencing is so connective. And me and my fellow academics talk about how the buffer of privilege has kept us and them and them and us and we from connecting and empathizing and acting. And I wonder all the while whether or not the fact that we keep talking about it and intellectualizing it is continuing to build the fiber of the veil between us and connection. But, clarity is not mine to have right now.
And yet, I seek it and try to capture it all the time. As I walked my dog tonight in the yard, I looked up at the brilliant coldness and icy brightness of the North Star and it's jagged edges of light made me feel resolute and calm, even though it hurt a little. I also made a list of things about my house that really annoy me. Dusty corners. Cluttered drawers. Asymmetrical piles. I need some Baroque rhythmic regularity to come in and sweep through my square footage of existence and give me some control. The only control that I can access is through breathing and watching the sky as if I were part of it - which maybe I am - and surrendering the control.
I think of Jane Austen and the "little bit - not two inches wide - of ivory" on which she chose to place her gaze and her work. There's a lesson in constraint and small spaces which may be mine to learn right now. Are there horizons to see within the square feet of this house that perhaps I have ignored in my attempts to always look outward? Perhaps the horizon of the sweetness and purity of my son's smile. Perhaps, the horizon of the fragility and strength of my daughter's embrace as we dance in our mutual desire to be absent and present to each other. Perhaps the horizon of devotion in my dog pressed up against my restless, sleeping form. Perhaps the infinite horizons in the uncertainty of the moment. A moment where I must simultaneously gather my will and insurance papers together in case of illness and spend 30 minutes discussing the proper way for a committee to proceed through a concordance of bureaucracy. A moment where I must simultaneously feel my heart beat to the rhythm of the Bach St. John Passion while I calculate how many loads of laundry need to be done before tomorrow and how long I can wait to go to the store to get some batteries. A moment where I sink deep into a poem about the parentheses and enclosed nature of trauma and cry while I send out e-mail invites to the next day's Zoom meetings. A moment where I laugh hysterically at the most stupid meme on the internet and feel the expansiveness of my purpose and meaning in the universe for a moment.
What a glorious and beautiful thing it is to be alive right now. What a terrible and beautiful thing it is to be alive right now. Take care, dear ones!
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