Hey there. Guess I’m a bit of a chatty Cathy this week :)
I had liminal spaces on my mind, and I wanted to talk about it.
Do you know what I mean by liminal space?
It’s a space, maybe recently vacated, where you get the impression of activity having just been there. Liminal spaces are the waiting areas between one point in time and space and the next.
It’s on my mind because I did some work for this short film called Bench Seats by Courtney DeStefano, and it’s all about that kind of vibe. I’m not sure I can do justice in describing it. Check it out (and help them with their fundraiser if you feel so inclined!).
Anyways, the film’s setting is in the 1980s and there’s a character who’s roughly the same age I was growing up in the 80s.
TBH, I actually don’t usually gravitate generally towards 80s-themed stuff.
It's because I often feel like when people describe the 80s, it’s not really the truth. It’s like what the 80s media imagined things to be like, not how it actually was.
But when I started thinking about this character, I suddenly had this visceral, sharp recollection of all these things I hadn’t thought about in more than a dozen years. She was real. I felt like I knew her, or that I could have been her.
I started to remember the dance classes my mom signed me up for, which I hated, because they only served to highlight how graceless I was compared to my sister. The warbly sound made by the warped old record our teacher played. The plastic, itchy feeling of the tights. The damp and funky smell of the leather on my ballet shoes.
I thought about the sticker album I had and how all my friends had them, and we’d show them to each other. We prized rare scratch n’ sniff scents, hologram stickers, and puffy stickers.
I remember the sound it made when I flipped through the plastic-sheeted pages and how they used to slightly stick together. I had a sudden, intense craving to hear that sound again. To smell a root beer-scented sticker.
I remembered the car my mom picked me up from school in and how she’d always turn the heater up to a million, and I felt like I was suffocating.
And I suddenly realized that ENTIRE time period is a liminal space for me.
A time I mark by a feeling of waiting. Waiting to grow up. Waiting for something interesting to happen. A time when things moved so, so slowly. A time I remember by its physical sensations, smells, and sounds.
I know I did things, went places, laughed and cried. But none of that has stayed with me in the same way.
I wonder what liminal spaces are busy forming in my children’s brains right now as I type this. What they will remember of this time, when they are grown.
Anyways, that’s enough for one email.
Happy Friday, and have a lovely weekend!
-Cathy