There are places we move through without stopping. Hallways, waiting rooms, airports at 3am. Places designed for transition, not habitation. We call them liminal spaces—from the Latin limen, meaning threshold.
The In-Between
What makes these spaces so compelling is their incompleteness. They’re designed to be left behind, yet they linger in memory with unexpected clarity. The fluorescent hum of an empty parking garage. The particular quality of light in a hotel corridor. These details stick because they catch us in a state of suspension.
We’re not quite where we were, not yet where we’re going.
Memory and Transition
The mind, perhaps, is most receptive in these threshold moments. Without the anchors of familiar routine, we notice things differently. The architecture of transition becomes visible. We see the scaffolding usually hidden by the rush of daily life.
“Not all who wander are lost, but all who linger are changed.” — Unknown
There’s something both unsettling and freeing about these spaces. They remind us that transformation isn’t always dramatic—sometimes it’s just the accumulated weight of in-between moments, the quiet drift from one state to another.
Creating Space
Maybe that’s what we’re doing when we write, when we create anything. Building our own liminal spaces. Places for others to pass through, to pause, to notice the quality of light as it filters through unfamiliar windows.
The blank page is its own kind of threshold. What we leave there becomes a doorway for someone else to walk through, momentarily suspended between where they are and where they might go next.