Liminality

(from Wikipedia)

Liminality

(from the Latin word līmen, meaning "a threshold"[1]) is a psychological, neurological, or metaphysical subjective state, conscious or unconscious, of being on the "threshold" of or between two different existential planes, as defined in neurological psychology (a "liminal state") and in the anthropological theories of ritual by such writers as Arnold van Gennep and Victor Turner
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In time

The temporal dimension of liminality can relate to moments (sudden events), periods (weeks, months, or possibly years), and epochs (decades, generations, maybe even centuries).[106]

Twilight serves as a liminal time, between day and night - where one is 'in the twilight zone, in a liminal nether region of the night'.[107] The title of the television fiction series The Twilight Zone makes reference to this, describing it as "the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition" in one variant of the original series' opening. The name is from an actual zone observable from space in the place where daylight or shadow advances or retreats about the Earth. Noon and, more often, midnight can be considered liminal, the first transitioning between morning and afternoon, the latter between days.

Within the years, liminal times include equinoxes when day and night have equal length, and solstices, when the increase of day or night shifts over to its decrease. Where the Quarter days are held to mark the change in seasons, they also are liminal times.

New Year's Day, whatever its connection or lack of one to the astrological sky, is a liminal time. Customs such as fortune-telling take advantage of this liminal state. In a number of cultures, actions and events on the first day of the year can determine the year, leading to such beliefs as First-Foot. Many cultures regard it as a time especially prone to hauntings by ghosts -- liminal beings, neither alive nor dead.

It can also mean a "threshold" in time and space, the middle ground between more than one entity without being either entity. The energy of both entities meet at this spot. The top of a mountain- in between the sky and the earth. Seashore- in between earth and ocean. Midnight- for those 60 seconds it is neither the past, present, or future. These are all Celtic symbols that are related to spiritus munda, which is the collective unconscious.

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In states of consciousness

Another example of liminality can occur when someone wakes from dream sleep and in a hypnopompic state of mind is unable to distinguish if a vaguely recalled dream actually occurred

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In places

The spatial dimension of liminality can include specific places, larger zones or areas, or entire countries and larger regions.[114] Liminal places can range from borders and frontiers to no man's lands and disputed territories, to crossroads to perhaps airports or hotels, which people pass through but do not live in: arguably indeed all 'romantic travel enacts the three stages that characterize liminality: separation, marginalization, and reaggregation'.[115] In mythology and religion or esoteric lore liminality can include such realms as Purgatory or Da'at, which, as well as signifying liminality, some theologians deny actually existing, making them, in some cases, doubly liminal. "Between-ness" defines these spaces. For a hotel worker (an insider) or a person passing by with disinterest (a total outsider), the hotel would have a very different connotation. To a traveller staying there, the hotel would function as a liminal zone, just as 'doors and windows and hallways and gates frame...the definitively liminal condition'.[116]

Examples in fiction include the Interzone, the Wood between the Worlds and, as mentioned, The Twilight Zone (1959). In this television series, the Twilight Zone does not appear as an actual literal location, making it both a place and not a place at the same time, and therefore also doubly liminal. Similarly, on the television show Lost, the Island is revealed to be in liminal space, constantly shifting through spacetime while being physically rooted somewhere in the South Pacific Ocean.

It has been suggested that of itself 'the Internet...creates a natural environment for liminality: a place separate from one's space where the ordinary norms of everyday life easily may be suspended'.[117]

More conventionally, springs, caves, shores, rivers, volcanic calderas - 'a huge crater of an extinct volcano...[as] another symbol of transcendence'[118] - fords, passes, crossroads, bridges, and marshes are all liminal: '"edges", borders or faultlines between the legitimate and the illegitimate'.[119] Oedipus (an adoptee and therefore liminal) met his father at the crossroads and killed him; the bluesman Robert Johnson met the devil at the crossroads, where he is said to have sold his soul. Major transformations occur at crossroads and other liminal places, at least partly because liminality—being so unstable—can pave the way for access to esoteric knowledge or understanding of both sides. Liminality is sacred, alluring, and dangerous.

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This notion of a state in between is excellent for my work. a pause.