thresholding
When you feel really like things are going to come apart into pieces, not in an epic explosive way but just in the way where you are not sure if you actually exist or why you are existing or what ground you are standing on at the moment (this could be a good or bad feeling, or in between), you do what is known as thresholding.
This is where you are feeling thresholdy (the feeling loosely noted above) and you go to a place that is a threshold in some way or another, some kind of amorphous/undefined/ambiguous area, a place in transition, a place with no boundary, a place that won’t be there tomorrow. The margins, the passageway between places, the bulldozed earth. GO BY YOURSELF. And then just spend some time there and walk where you feel like within/around that place. Maybe take a camera or drawing stuff because words are generally useless on the threshold, maybe take some food if you think to grab it on your way outta the house, but usually you are leaving the house (or wherever you are) in a rush because you are feeling fucking THRESHOLDY and in your room or trying to talk to your lovely housemate or in a public sociable space is NO PLACE TO BE when you need to be THRESHOLDING.
(Does it have to be said that a car can’t take you to the threshold? Get out & walk to find it, ride your bike but get off when you get there, you need to be moving slowly & feeling your feet on the ground.)
Do that for a while, look at everything, touch things, sit down, lie down, pick up things & put them back or put them in your pocket or put them where they should be. Watch the angles & proportions of the space change as you walk through it. Do something that is scary, climb up a thing, take off your shirt in the sunlight, test the rotted floor, be alone for a little bit longer. When you are done you are done, go back to where people are, or to the coffee shop, get warm, write in your notebook.
Nothing will be solved by doing this. But you do it anyway. Thresholding isn’t supposed to offer you anything, all it can do is echo your own internal threshold but be bigger than you at the same time, hold you within it… something like that… can’t analyze it too much, it’s a threshold…
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I forgot to mention! a crucial part of this scenario, at the beginning of it, is texting five or so friends and then when nobody texts you back you realize you actually need to be thresholding instead. !!!!
ahhh i really appreciate this!!! while the threshold as a location (doorway or house entrance) is the domain of janus, the threshold as a concept or interzone is the domain of mercury, who is also the god of language. so silence is very appropriate! mercury appears on a scene in a conspicuous silence (or threshold between topics in a conversation)- people used to say “mercury has entered” as common rebound from an awkward pause. will gladly (and endlessly?) riff with you about liminal figures, their powers and drawbacks. also:
ONCE LIVING, NOW MONSTERS! A TALE OF THE THRESHOLD PEOPLE
whoops, trying to link here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4RAO6DpDJU
leaving comments on a self-hosted weblog in 2012 = being over 30yo
it’s true. and holy crap, I LOVE being over 30 years old. it takes a lot of the pressure off… !
The view from over-60 is twice as good.