Moments, Liminal

I don't often read advice columns. I am fascinated by people, and their problems, and their neuroses, and so reading advice columns seems like a natural thing for me to do, but I don't often do it. I find them inherently condescending, primarily, and that makes them difficult for me to read.

It's probably a good thing that I don't read them often; as was pointed out to me recently in disparaging tones, the last thing I need is to become further steeped in pop psychology and dime-store theories. All the good intentions and compassion in the world will be for naught if I start to believe too strongly in my own cleverness.

But sometimes, the tag line is too good, too close to home, too grabbing for me to ignore. Tag lines like "Must I Choose: My Muse or My Wife?" are more or less guaranteed to get me reading.

I'm not male, and my personality is not really set up for clear-cut dichotomies, but this is a thing that I have often struggled with. I require, for better or worse, a great deal of stimulation. I need people, different people, different perspectives, new ideas. I crave them. I crave the interaction that is exchanging thoughts with someone, and I crave variety in that enterprise.

My ex-husband had a less charitable view of this desire of mine; he told me that I required a lot of attention. That is probably true, although not, I think, entirely in the way he meant it. I am not someone that requires the full attention of another person at all times. I crave copious quantities of solitude as desperately as I crave new ideas and interactions. I need time to recharge and regroup, to integrate the sum total of those new ideas gleaned from new interactions into my cosmology and adjust as necessary. But I would be lying if I said I don't enjoy the attention of the people that I love, or admire, or respect. Who doesn't enjoy attention, honestly?

But the thrust of this man's problem is that while he very much wants to be a good husband to his wife, he finds he is consistently projecting desire onto other women and using the resultant emotional reactions as inspiration. He is creating muses for himself. And he is afraid he is hurting his wife in this process.

I very much want to be a good partner, but I require a lot of stimulation. No one person is ever going to be enough for me. And that can be hurtful. Jealousy is an ugly, wily, slippery thing, and it can rear its poisonous head and kill even the heartiest love dead.

Most of the columnist's advice I found unhelpful and unnessecarily downing. But there was one line, one line in the whole response, that sent the hamsters in my brain madly turning their wheels: "I also think it might be useful for you to read the Wikipedia entry on liminality. Why do I think that? Not sure."

Read the Wikipedia entry on liminality. Don't know why, just do it. Perhaps the columnist knows more than he is telling, or perhaps he intuitively knows something he can't verbalize, or perhaps it was just a random stab in the dark because this guy really likes the concept of liminality. I don't know. But that was the best bit of advice I have ever seen in an advice column in my life.

Read the Wikipedia entry on liminality. Just do it.

A liminal moment is a threshhold, it is the state of being betwixt and between two concretely defined states. Liminal moments occur in all strata of human organization, from individuals to the world at large. The term was originally coined in 1909 by Arnold van Gennep in the classic anthropological tome Rites of Passage. I studied van Gennep; I remember being fascinated by the concept seven years ago.

Because the columnist did not see fit to elucidate his reasons for recommending reading about liminality, I can only guess what he was trying to impart. But I know, very clearly, what I got out of reminding myself about the concept of liminality.

I am spending my life searching out liminal moments. If I could, I would live entirely in the threshhold, in the state betwixt and between all definite things. It is in those moments, and that state, that creativity is most abundant. It is in those spaces where all stability and order have passed away and new orders and structures have not yet been erected that inspiration is clearest. I have spent my life, and I will continue to spend my life, seeking permanent liminality.

New people and new interactions and new ideas are merely vehicles for finding those things that force me into liminality, so that I do reorder my cosmology. All that attention is fodder for the productive use of my solitude.

Some part of me, the heedless, reckless, wild part wants to say that art is that which is a catalyst for liminal moments. Art is that which sends you careening into the space betwixt and between the ordinary structures of the world. Anything else is mere craft, no matter how well constructed.

And I want to create art. I want to live in the empty space between letters, in the pause of the comma and not in the words surrounding it.

I have a dirty mouth, and it bothers me.

I gave up swearing for Lent. It has not been going well.

I have sworn like a little sailor from the time I was about 14 onward. My vocabulary is filthy, if extensive. For many, many years, I took a great and perverse delight in my dirty mouth. I was proud of it. I was also always aware when I was swearing and what I was saying.

Recently, that has not been so much the case. In the last year (probably more like 18 months, but whatever) I have noticed that more and more I do not remember swearing. Other people have pointed out to me that I have, on occasion, dropped some f-bombs and other choice morsels into situations that they were probably not entirely appropriate. Now, I'm not completely lost, as I have not yet sworn to my brand-new, shiny coworkers, nor have I sworn at a Church function. To my knowledge.

But I was sufficiently wigged out after swearing in work-related conversation with a business acquaintance (not nearly as stuffy as it sounds, but still) that I decided to give up swearing for Lent.

See, the popular culture version of Lent would have you believe it's about punishing yourself, and therefore you should give up things that you like to eat. That makes sense in someone's mind. Not mine, but someone's.

The thing is, though, that Lent isn't actually about self-flagellation. It's a time of spiritual discipline, much like any of the other spiritual disciplines that people have come to accept as way better than Christianity. It's a time to be mindful of what you do, to decrease the amount of time and energy and money that you spend on yourself and increase the amount of time, energy and money you spend on others. It's a time for stripping your life down to the bare necessities for a finite period, to shut out the distractions and focus on God and contemplation and your spiritual life.

So I gave up swearing. To make myself more mindful of the words that are coming out of my mouth, because we should always be aware of what we're saying and how we're saying it. And my own (personal) belief is that it might help make the world a better place. We can only control ourselves, ultimately, and so I can do everything to make myself the best person I can be. Which includes my language.

It's been going terribly, though. I can't seem to stop myself. I can't seem to make myself think about how I'm saying something- the words just fly out and there I am, left embarrassed and a little guilty.

So I'm thinking about giving up strawberry jam instead.