Poem || Storms

Writing || Life in Liminality

On being stuck in between.

Liminality is an idea I am quickly becoming obsessed with. It is the concept of a threshold, an in between space that only exists as a throughway to get you from where you've been to where you are going. Liminal spaces are not designed to exist on their own; they would have no context if removed from the position they are in, between two other spaces.

Liminal spaces can be both mental or physical, and I can guarantee that you've occupied both kinds many times in your life. Physical liminal spaces have a very distinct feeling to them, an otherworldly atmosphere where reality appears to be altered. When we linger inside spaces which are made for passing through, our minds begin to try and contextualise them and can't, leading to the uneasy feeling they give us.

Some examples of physical liminal spaces are:

- Fire Escape Staircases

- Parking Lots

- Truck Stops

- Tunnels

- Airport Terminals

- Waiting Rooms

Did visualising that list create a certain feeling in your mind? This is the effect of liminality.

Mental liminal spaces can be harder to explain, they are periods of time where you (or a whole society) exist between the person you have been and the person you will be. You feel no longer like you did and not yet like you will.

I now see the irony of my blog title The Halfway Point; the very definition of a liminal space. 2016 has been an in between year for me, where I have constantly felt not at all like the person I knew myself to be. It's like being trapped on an endless staircase, running up and up and up but never finding an exit; stuck in a place I was only ever meant to be passing through. I think perhaps everyone's early 20's are filled with liminality; where you are no longer as young and naive as your teenage self and yet you do not know enough to feel like an adult. You are suspended somewhere in between borders, living on no man's land.

Understanding this concept has given me something to grab onto in relation to how I've been feeling for this past year. Not completely existing inside reality is terrifying, and though I believe my brain's current disorientation is caused by much more than this, it is comforting to assure myself that I am in an in between. That one day soon I will find the staircase's exit, leave the waiting room, and come flying out the other end of the tunnel. It's all just a matter of time.

Poem || This is the Part

this is the part where your world falls to pieces,

the scene where the curtain is drawn,

where the pages that speak of your life fill with creases

and your dreams are all weary and worn.

this is the part where it seems it's all ending,

where the colour is ripped from the skies,

this is the madness before all the mending,

the darkness before the sun's rise.

Video || September 2016

September marked 1 year since arriving home from my adventure in the US, so it's fitting that it was filled with adventures of its own: A trip to Melbourne to visit my best friend and moving out. What a month.

(Also: I've started an instagram for photos I take that I want to curate. If you want you can follow them here: instagram.com/wand.erin.gs

~ Erin

Brain Dump #1

I think one of the reasons I went on hiatus back in March (how was it so long ago already!?) was that I felt this space had grown into one where everything had to be well curated and visually appealing. I'd unknowingly boxed myself into a place where there wasn't much room to express the messy and incoherent parts of me that were just as important as the one that likes order. So here's an attempt at fixing that: brain dumps. Rambling thoughts or ideas that have occurred to me in the past few turns of time. 

1. Why have all the blogs I used to read seemingly died? I went through and unfollowed all the no longer used blogs I once followed and now I'm left with hardly any. Has blogging started to lose its popularity or is it just losing its popularity with me? Maybe I just have no niche community to fit into.

2. Today I locked myself in my bathroom with a pair of scissors and gave myself a fringe. Whether I'll regret it remains to be seen. I've not had one since that awkward 2008 stage but now it just makes me want to wear hoop earrings and denim jackets. I think I might love it.

3. Today I left the house purely to go and buy a loaf of bread and I think that may be the definition of adulthood.

4. Library's are so underrated. LOOK AT ALL THIS FREE KNOWLEDGE FOR THE TAKING.

5. Even though you can leave a place and you can leave things behind, you still carry all your thoughts with you despite how heavy they are. 

6. I haven't been writing poetry recently. To be honest it just doesn't feel like it's in me anymore. I want to do something new and leave that part of me behind.

~