....but your luggage never arrives on the carousel, after an hour of waiting.
Instead....just... heads of cabbage... with notes tacked to them, all blaming you for everything from minor inconveniences, to horrific tragedies.
In your bewildered, jet lagged state, confounded as to the location of your luggage, stupified by the proponderance of agitated vegetables...
You take off your glasses, drop some visine into each eye, blink a few times, and resettle your spectacles.
'Cabbage Blame ... ?' you whisper aloud, rereading the airport signage.
6Do those cabbages know what I did last summer?
2
This isn't liminal. It's not empty, abandoned, eerie, nostalgic, or surreal.
1It actually is liminal.
The original, and still current, definition of 'liminal' is an intermediate between two states, conditions or regions.
It is the concept of transiting, moving through from one place or belief system or state of mind or form, to another.
Liminal Space is an architectural term that applies to areas that are designed to simply be moved through, not to stay or dwell in for long periods of time.
An entryway, an airport concourse, the sort of walking avenues of an indoor mall, a hallway... all of these are liminal spaces. A bedroom, or dining hall or office, or study, are not.
...
The internet phenomenon of liminal spaces being creepy originally derived from some youtube videos explaining how a large amount of particularly American lives are experienced in areas that are designed to just... be moved through, as opposed to inhabited, and how this in itself is creepy and dissociating, as there are fewer and fewer and fewer physical areas that are designed to allow just... public gatherings... and how this literally is now a world that is designed to just shuttle you through, that you can't stay anywhere ... that this itself is creepy and dissociates us from ourselves and others.
...
Purgatory, as a concept, is liminal.
The Matrix's depiction of purgatory, as a literal subway station that just pops you out on the other side of the track if you start moving through it, this is liminal.
The place is physically designed for you to move through quickly, it has no comforts or privacy, encourages you to leave... but in the Matrix, you can't actually leave, you always return to where you start.
... Analogous to how, if you take a subway to work in real life, everyday... you're always going there, every day. It is familiar, but it isn't welcoming, you cannot inhabit it and make it your own, but its a major part of your life.
So it is more of an inescapable place than it is a livable, customizable, comforting place.
It evokes the feeling of a hamster running on a treadmill but not actually progressing anywhere.
...
... But anyway, then 'the backrooms' happened, and soon after that, most of the internet lost the plot to the point that you believe what you just said.
You could have a dilapidated, post apocalyptic bedroom, with a few scattered childrens toys, but overgrown with mold and vines, noticably less advanced in the places the bed and dresser were but no longer are, with a strange iridescent oil seeping up from the ground...
And that would be
empty, abandoned, eerie, nostalgic, or surreal.
But it would not be a liminal space.
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