Liminal living

The period between Christmas and New Year is betwixt and between. On the threshold adjoining the old and the new, it is a time of transition and much uncertainty. It is a time for introspection and taking stock of the year past and making plans for the year to come. On one hand, we know it is an arbitrary marker of time, on the other we eagerly await a new ‘beginning’.

This period can be disorienting. We hardly know the day of the week as one day flows into the next. We are both restless and grateful for a chance to slow down. Family ties are strengthened or strained. Sometimes both at the same time. We nibble on leftovers, go to bed, rise at odd times and may have visitors staying for extended periods. Or we may be the visitors wondering whether we have overstayed our welcome. Time stretches, attenuates, and warps which gives this interminable interval such a nebulous almost dreamlike quality.

I too am hovering in this in liminal state. I am ready to move house, but that time hasn’t arrived. Shelves have been emptied and boxes are packed and I am in limbo. My spirit has left this house but not yet arrived at its next dwelling. It is what I imagine purgatory is like – neither here nor there. I am restless, in a state of flux, a fluid, fitful phase which objectively will be over before I know it. In the meantime, I feel as if I am stuck in eternal twilight, like a somnambulist caught in that transitional state between sleep and wakefulness.