“Dawn is the period in the day when light from the sun begins to appear in the sky” – Cambridge Dictionary
“New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings.” ~Lao Tzu
“Dawn and dusk are considered liminal places.” -Janice Mason Steve
According to most sources liminal space is an in-between place, a place of transition, a time of waiting and not knowing.
Through the steady, daily ritual of the rising of my sun during the past two years, a time of waiting and not knowing, it has now dawned on me….
As I slide the window open I am hit by a wall of thick, hot air.
I can barely breathe.
This time, though, I know it’s not from anxiety, but the humidity in this harsh, alluring place which I now call home.
I look onto the building site a few metres away, involuntarily yearning for the inspiring horizon that greeted me when I arrived here two years ago.
My skin turns moist, and the buzz of the early morning slowly awakens my senses to the new day. As the darkness slowly starts lifting, a stray dog barks and a seagull glides gracefully past the window. The new day is called as the voices of the mosquesjoin in to meet me at my window.
Lost in my head, slowly but suddenly, I am made aware of a sensory overload. I lift the lens in anticipation of that extra large Middle Eastern sun which will rise for me, now, today.
And then it’s there:
She appears out of nowhere and perches herself on the diagonal line that is cutting through my horizon. Calmlypacing the unfamiliar structure we both have to circumnavigate in our new surroundings, she is joined by him and the morning is suddenly spectacular. A perfect union, that seems like eternity in a moment.
The sunrise is breathtakingand I smile at the grace of God and the messages of the universe: I am exactly where I need to be. Here, in this moment and in this place, with this view.
I light the cigarette I shouldn’t have, and the sound of the message on my phone brings a smile to my face.
I can breathe again.
The liminal is eternal: we are forever on the threshold of something new.
“deprived of physical sensation or the ability to move, manifesting or resembling numbness: a numb sensation, incapable of action or of feeling emotion, lacking or deficient in emotion or feeling; indifferent”
Oxford Dictionary
“The inability to open up to hope is what blocks trust, and blocked trust is the reason for blighted dreams.” ― Elizabeth Gilbert“
“It hurts until it doesn’t. You think it’s going to break you, but it won’t. You may not sleep as well at night, but you will be fine. Numb, but numb and fine are the same.” ― Nitya Prakash
“There are endings. There are beginnings. Sometimes they coincide, with the ending of one thing marking the beginning of another. But sometimes there is simply a long space after an ending, a time when it seems everything else has ended and nothing else can ever begin.”
If you’ve ever felt emotionally numb before, you know it’s a feeling that’s difficult to put into words. Numbness literally means unable to think, feel, or react normally — it’s not anger or confusion or even sadness, but simply a lack of emotion.
“I am fine.”
This has been my response to those around me. Of course I am fine. I have written this blog, and the cathartic experience of letting it all out there has dealt with the trauma.
“Yes, I am fine!”
Until I realised that lately, ‘fine’ is ‘numb’, and that I am not fine.
I opened the shower tap and stepped under the soft waterfall, expecting the heat to heal my tired, heavy muscles, tight from stress and emotional turmoil. I turned around to admire the familiar, breathtaking view from my (once) beautiful palace’s guestroom. And I think of how now, I am only a visitor to this amazing feat of a building we built. The thoughts take control of my heart, soul and mind. I am overwhelmed. I look around and see everything. The objects and fittings around me all have significance: I chose them carefully with the conception of this dwelling. And my thoughts dwell on how I spent time all alone in this room and bathroom two years ago. And the tears join the waterfall sliding down my body, disappearing into the drain.
I cannot stop crying. I am numb. Drained. Cleansed, but definitely not fine.
Today I think of this experience a few days ago, and realise that I have not dealt with my trauma. I feel like I now have to shout it out at the top of the highest mountain; that I need to tell everybody who has had an influence on my life, since that drowning-in-the-mud moment almost three years ago, the absolute truth. I need to be vulnerable and sad and happy and fragile and strong all simultaneously in order to move on and stop the waterfall of tears. So this is what I am going to do and need to do to set myself and those around me free. It all came to me in a dream:
In my dream I desperately reach out to my love, but he turns around and walks away. I shout for help, but he can’t hear me anymore for he is now too far away. I linger, try again and again, but to no avail. I close the door and fall to the ground. The room is empty, quiet and dark. I pray for light and love and somebody to save me from this darkness……
From the darkness letters start raining softly on me, over me, slowly falling next to me. They enter my veins and start swimming upstream into my bloody heart. The words are beautiful, they soothe my soul, and fill my empty heart . I feel envigorated, excited, and my heart bursts open exposing and freeing my own words. Words flow from my heart into the liminal space of my journey to healing. My blog is born. Early morning messages from afar calms my heart, and I lose myself in them. I look into the eyes from which they came from a distance and my heart is taken.
As my dream continues, the words dry up, and I am left alone again……..
I desperately shout out at my love, he returns and I whisper sweet words into his ears, I even offer my body to him to attempt to win his love back. He acknowledges me and enters the room, caresses my body, but then walks out the door into the arms of another. I turn the key slowly, shutting him out.
I search all around the room, slowly moving to the light visible through the window. There is a beautiful, young man outside the window and he asks to come inside. We do not talk much, but his wonderful soul makes me feel less lonely as he occasionally softly visits my body; but he does not offer me any words. I still feel lonely, and reach up to the ceiling to catch the words that filled my veins….but they are gone, and the heart that wrote them is too far away; offering himself to a beautiful creature I cannot compare with.
I am lonely, but I am fine.
The room lightens up, and from a small window I did not notice was there before, a bright light enters. It jumps from left to right, up and down, all around my head, and makes me laugh and smile. The creator of this light offers everything: words, kisses, caresses, exciting conversations, sexy thoughts…..and I am hooked. He teases and whispers and touches me in a way nobody has dared before. He eventually rides into the room in his shining armor, picks me up and almost saves me from the dark room I am trapped in. I am happy and my room lights up brightly….. until the knight on his white horse falls off, taking me with him as we fall onto the ground. As he gets up and dusts himself before leaving the room, I realise that it has turned dark again.
I am lonely, but I am fine.
My broken heart bleeds freely, and as I am about to try and scoop up the blood from the floor, it happens: my love violently breaks down the door and enters the room: transformed. He offers me everything. Words, his heart, his belongings. But I cannot find the key to the door…. I have to unlock the door in order for him to enter through it and into my heart. I desperately grasp around on the floor, but all I can feel is the warm blood……I cannot find the key.
I am lonely, but I am fine.
Numb.
The dream of my subconscious is vivid and painfully true. How utterly amazing is the hidden mind, trying to figure it all out when we are asleep. And here I am, still writing this blog: grasping in the dark room in order to find myself and the closure I need. I hope that the men and lovers in my dream forgive me for sharing our encounters with the world. But I also wish, secretly, that I am, or was in their dreams.
I still think about the ‘creator’ of my words. Every single day. The soul that connected with mine, and opened up the sluices to my heart and these words.
All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible.
“The only person we have the right or the power to forgive is ourselves. For everything else, there is the Art of Acceptance.”
― Rebecca O’Dwyer
This year, I decided, would be a good one.
Naturally, it started off with my messages in the clouds. The first cloud of the year took my breath away. It was a bright new morning when I looked upwards to escape the reality of his irritability. The dark blue, almost black stately vehicle pulled slowly out of the garage. As I looked up I saw the silent fireworks up in the sky. The lines of ecstasy captured in this image is a reminder and manifestation of our memorable fireworks under the clear midnight sky of the previous night.
But, unfortunately, my clouds had a clear message – decisions are just what they are – decisions. Life has its own plans…….
The messages were very clear: and were all painfully visible in my blue sky.
All in ONE day: New Year’s day.
1 January 2021.
According to the Oxford dictionary a decision is a conclusion or resolution reached after consideration. I realise that I have not considered anything lately, really…… I have not had any real cognitive considerations of the grey matter the past few months. Only a frantic, emotional roller coaster ride of feelings.
The realisation of my emotional, liminal journey and the insignificance of my life in the large expanse of this seemingly picture-perfect world dawned on me later that morning as I boarded the seventh flight I bravely took singularly in just a few weeks.
This flight was back home. Alone.
As I looked down at the clouds and the world below this experience we call life and humanity hit me like a huge, heavy rock in the pit of my stomach. I am alone; searching. We are all searching for something that we cannot define. Above the clouds I discovered a different perspective: from my vantage point high above the ground I saw a new horizon consisting of clouds. And above them: a new sky! I sadly realised that I would never see him again. I know now those wheels do not travel far: they pull out of those garages, but never come to rest in one. I learnt a life lesson about the tightrope of the heart and the mind. The beautiful photograph I took will forever remind me of keeping perspective.
The third image I took later on that day, looking up into the clear blue sky at sunset of the first day of the new year. Beauty tinged with a feint pink colour. Promises in the sky. Promises of a future that I do not have much power over.
“Dualism is the concept that our mind is more than just our brain. This concept entails that our mind has a non-material, spiritual dimension that includes consciousness and possibly an eternal attribute.”
The relation between reason and passion has fascinated philosophers for centuries. After Plato and Aristotle, western literature often treated reason as being opposed to emotion. This is the so called dilemma between “the head” (rationality) and “the heart” (emotion). Though, the exact relationship between reason and emotion remains a mystery, our daily experience leaves little doubt that both emotion and reason impact our decision making to a great extent. Decision making is often referred to as a process in which a choice is made after reflection about consequences of that choice.
My absence to this liminality I call my blog has taken its toll, and the need to write the dualism from my heart and brain has surfaced with the need for fresh air.
Somehow, this journey towards my healing is interconnected with the masses of water that I keep being drawn towards. The water is becoming clearer, though. The muddy mess I started out from drowning in at the start of this liminal space three years ago is almost a distant memory now. But of course the absolute determination on finding lighthearted, happy and carefree, clearer waters with new, fresh memories has almost made me taste the sand between my teeth again. And I did not even enter the ocean…..
The morning is heavy with opportunity and the humid air clings promisingly on my damp skin. My prince gives me a strong, warm and loving hug and kiss. No hesitation, no holding back. It leaves me breathless. I feel like a princess, looking down from her balcony at the breathtaking sunrise over the ocean below. The tears in my eyes I quickly wipe away before my prince, the knight in shining armor, can notice. They are tears of joy. I cannot believe that love can be bestowed so freely and easily. Nobody has ever treated me like a princess before. Wanted me, and only me. I am dumbstruck. Numb.
Seven carefree days filled with laughter and banter and companionship and like-mindedness, the experience of absolute bliss: fit for a princess.
AND THEN IT ENDED. Reason happened. The heart and its emotions lost: rationality and the strength of the (realistic) brain won.
There are no princes and princesses, only frogs that become kings for a while. We are all searching for love in the wrong places.
As I think back now, I wish I had swum in that great expanse of water…. dived into the salty ocean that I am actually so afraid of. If I had only allowed the waves to have overwhelmed me and pushed my skin onto the bottom of the ocean and had allowed for its force to have rolled me head first into the sand: back to reality! If only I had not listened to my fragile heart, it would still be intact.
Goodbye my fair prince, my king. You have a piece of my stupid, broken heart in your beautiful brain.
I will dive into that ocean head first the next chance I am given in life, and undertake to fully allow myself to taste the bittersweet, salty, beautiful ocean with its hard sand grinding between my teeth. I know now that life is cruel and beautiful simultaneously: even with princes and kings in it.
“I am”… I said To no one there And no one heard at all Not even the chair
“I am”… I cried “I am”… said I And I am lost and I can’t Even say why Leavin’ me lonely still
Did you ever read about a frog Who dreamed of bein’ a king And then became one Well except for the names And a few other changes If you talk about me The story’s the same one
But I got an emptiness deep inside And I’ve tried But it won’t let me go
“Love is the brightest star in life’s darkest skies.”
― Matshona Dhliwayo
“Love conquers all. I do not mean the exhilarating, spell-bound sort of love that temporarily intoxicates us. I mean the profound, unconditional, Christ-like sort of charitable love that endures forever. That love conquers all.”
“Love is the brightest star in life’s darkest skies.”
― Matshona Dhliwayo
Thursday, 26 November 2020
Today was mundane, normal, busy, and then suddenly very different: I suppose exactly like the clouds in the sky. The mood and shapes of clouds change constantly in front of the bright blue sky, to remind us of the flux of it all …
The call came late afternoon. A worried voice at the other end, but still matter-of-factly, informational. When you are used to working with these things I suppose you learn how to be calm. I am worried, but not particularly, because they take care, and there is a higher hand in charge. My mom taught me that.
The second call came shortly after the first.
Finality is instant. My heart became silent for a while, and then my head took over. After the initial tears the clouds quickly changed their stance and shapes shifted into a different constellation. I could remain calm for the four difficult calls to my siblings that I had to make thereafter. As I looked outside I could see the clouds moving quietly, and I realised that they slowly started settling beautifully into a different place – almost unnoticed. I couldn’t capture it on camera, but those clouds are etched in my heart.
I was sad, but calm, not knowing why. The only thing that I could think of as I spoke to my siblings, the one after the other, is that “Love conquers all”. My beautiful, stylish, sometimes incorrigible mother taught us this. And as I reversed my car out of my garage there it was: the spectacular cloud at the end of another normal, mundane day in our lives. Brightly waiting for me to capture it on film. And I knew what the message in the sky was: this day was filled with love – a love conquering all pain and discomfort and confusion. And I could smile and feel her love and warm hugs and kisses that she so loved to give and receive. I knew she was dancing in the clouds, and my tears were gone. I knew that every bright cloud hereafter would become a reminder that we have to dance and appreciate life, love and the clouds!
I once read somewhere that becoming a whole person involves utilizing our heart, our soul, our mind, and our strength. It is true:
My sky has been expanding the past two weeks. The clouds appeared with a vengeance, and filled the blue sky with astounding colours and nuances of magnificent sunrises and sunsets. The magnitude of it all has been enveloping my whole being, and I can’t escape its overbearing messages: my soul smiles while my heart cries, and my mind needs to be strong.
I am against the wall: I cannot face it all.
As I slowly pick up all the pieces in my mind and heart, I realize that I cannot design my own life and future. What is perspiring in the clouds was not in my plan. I am dumbfounded by the sunrises and sunsets that are speaking truth into my life: Too much. Too little. Too late. The sunset is yellow and red and pink, but its mangnificance fades quickly in the darkness of the night.
But oh! My sunrise…..The sunrise fills the sky with absolute splendour. Too wonderful. Enough. In abundance. And I am happy, ecstatic. Suddenly scared of what this day has to offer.
These sunrises and sunsets are speaking truth into my soul, hopefully cutting into the shadows of my past that have been haunting my days… I offer all of myself to the universe: light and dark. All of me.
Let me hear in the morning of your steadfast love,
for in you I trust.
Make me know the way I should go,
for to you I lift up my soul.
Psalm 143:8, New English version of the Bible
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.
Lamentations 3:22-23, English Standard Version of the Bible
“Being faithful in the smallest things is the way to gain, maintain, and demonstrate the strength needed to accomplish something great.”
― Alex Harris
“To be strong does not mean to sprout muscles and flex. It means meeting one’s own numinosity without fleeing, actively living with the wild nature in one’s own way. It means to be able to learn, to be able to stand what we know. It means to stand and live.”
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. (Jeremiah 29:11 NIV)”
The sunrises and sunsets of the past two weeks have been carefully planned and manoeuvred by the universe to speak to my soul. Sunsets are melancholic, and with them they bring the beautiful cool night sounds of nature outside of my window. As I lie awake listening to crickets and night owls I wait for the sad and melancholic thoughts to bring tears to my eyes….. but the joy in my soul is strongly growing and strengthening my heart. The tears are few, and I realise why: everything has been planned. As soon as I had let go and let destiny happen, it all fell into place: my heart is silently protected.
Walking through the white corridors of the sterile environment of the hospital towards the room where my earthly father lies patiently waiting for me, my heart is heavy with empathy and love for this great, strong, beautiful and steadfast man who has brought and taught me so much more in life than I ever thought possible. I have to pause and lift my head a bit higher – smile behind the mask and then walk on, into the room where I now have to offer strength and encouragement to him. It is my turn.
As I take off my mask to embrace my dadI lift up my soul to my heavenly father, for it is He who knows the way I should go.
The clouds have been faithful the past week: strong, bright, heavy and omnipresent. Summer’s overwhelming skies kept my mind from the realities of life, but still, the messages of mortality were clear in the overbearingly bright orange sunrises and of course; the sunsets…….
The fact is that the beginning (and end) of every day is never the same, but still remains spectacular. We only need to look! The sunrises and sunsets are always there, though, in the same unwavering rise and descent of the days of mine and yours and ours and their lives. The colours and nuances of the universe’s promises at dawn and dusk do not disappoint, and neither does God. Promises of hope and a future are painted in the sky. These spectacular sunrises inspire my heart to pump with blood and I am (at last) embracing life and love. God knew long before I did where I needed to be presently, and yes: I am present in the moment – all my moments!
As I look into my dad’s eyes we share a silly joke and a hug – the awe-inspiring gift of love and strength. Of hope and thankfulness: joy in each other’s company. Now, in this moment. And forever more!
The sunrises speak of life and the ebb and flow of it all. My life, the liminality of it all. And I suddenly realise that the liminal space is my life. The people drawn into my life. Your life. His life. Our lives – and how it all interacts and intertwines, planned all in advance by something far greater we could ever imagine.
“If we’re wrapping ourselves up to conceal any vulnerability, whatever happens to us has to go through all those extra layers. Sometimes love doesn’t even reach where we truly live.”
“We live beneath many layers. Some are for our protection, and some are for our control.”
― Russell Eric Dobda
“In all, there were ten different types of clouds: cumulus, stratos, cumulonimbus, stratocumulus, nimbostratus, altocumulus, altostratus, cirrocumulus, cirrostratus, and cirrus – each with their own personality: fluffy, detached, transparent, thin, continuous, gray, heavy, dense, semi-transparent, and layered, which I use to describe my own moods and feelings at any given time.”
The weekend sunsets are ever-present in my life, and I have come to accept that I cannot escape my Saturday and Sunday afternoon clouds. These clouds are breathtakingly beautiful, but layered with melancholy.
I do not run from them anymore.
‘What a wonderful, happy day’, I think, as I drive back home. I bravely look up at the sky and take a picture, and I am (unexpectedly) confronted by the realization of my solitary state. The sky is a layered artwork with nuances of white, yellow, grey and blue – symbols of layered complications of my life. It moves, slowly changing into my mesmerizing, cruel reality: revealing those layers is as if peeling my heart like an onion. With each layer the beauty scratches at the back of my eyes. As the layers are peeled and reality revealed, my magnificent onion sky causes involuntary tears over which I have no control.
I did not choose this solitary, melancholy current state of my life; but I am strong and brave. These awe inspiring weekend sunsets usually precede the lonely dark moments at the onset of dusk. The clouds disappear when you close that door behind you, and you know deep down at the core that you do not have your own blood to share your sky with.
Peeling away the layers, I am confronted with the revelation of uncontrollable feelings of these revealing layers of my life, and the ever present pain in my heart. To ease the pain I wipe away the onion induced layered tears and precariously share my deepest secrets and feelings with complete strangers. I tease and chat and laugh and cry and offer my body to forget about the cruel reminders in the layered clouds of my weekend sky. I do not know what else to do, but allow the layers to be torn from my bleeding heart.
I foolishly offer the core of my soul to the brave being who will not shy away from peeling away the raw and cruel layers of my weak heart.
Lust is a psychological force producing an intense desire for an object, or circumstance, fulfilling the emotion while already having a significant other or amount of the desired object.
“There is a very thin line of demarcation dividing true love from unadulterated lust. What is love without the pleasures of the flesh and what is lust sans a fluttering heart?”
“I don’t define lust as anything evil or nasty. Lust as defined by me, is the feeling of desire: a desire to eat cake, a desire to feel the touch of another’s skin moving over your own skin, a desire to breathe, a desire to live, a desire to laugh intensely like it was the best thing God ever created…this is lust as defined by me. And I think that’s what it really is.”
― C. JoyBell C.
“Keep your passions burning brightly.”
― Wayne Gerard Trotman
Ratto di Proserpina, BERNINI, 1621. Marble sculpture detail.
The sky gently invites my eyes upwards. I lustfully breathe in the animated white markings that are softly touching and teasing the blue expanse and beyond. The clouds above my head become inconspicuous caresses of beauty, coercing me into a gentle appreciation of their allure.
I cannot help myself.
Beauty is my nemesis. And what is beauty but lust? I realize this now: my nemesis are these beautiful experiences. The power of a light touch, a soft caress, a slow kiss, inspiring words, conversing with a clever mind. Sex. An honest soul. Witty conversations. The beauty of art. The winsomeness of magnificent objects; a cast steel object with elegant designs that brings back memories.
Beauty and lust may be my downfall,
Or perhaps my saving grace?
Bernini’s sculpture has been stuck in my brain since I saw the image a few days ago. The flesh of the marble is cold, but so extremely passionate and lustful. Pleasure. Appreciation. Love? No, this one is not that cliched.
My soul feels alive.
I have suddenly started appreciating EVERYTHING around me. And I am happy. Truly feeling a lust for life. The clouds silently caress my soul and their (knowingly) kind loveliness fills my life with appreciation for EVERYONE in it. The clouds are speaking lust into my life, and I embrace the sweet, comforting nemesis of my being.
At the inception of my liminal journey I had nothing, but the free-wheeling and free falling made me spread my wings. I was forced to lift my broken wings to the skies.
And now I am flying high, and don’t want to come down. I will unashamedly embrace the present until God places that ultimate lust lovingly in my heart and soul.
Because nothing is ever something until you give (and take) everything.
I still stand stiff in between; never questioned my worth
Never doubted my beliefs …”
― Samiha Totanji
“Gray.
The overcast skies had the colour of deadened stones, and seemed closer than usually, as though they were phlegmatically observing my every movement with their apathetic emptily blue-less eyes; each tiny drop of hazy rain drifting around resembled transparent molten steel, the pavement looked like it was about to burst into disconsolate tears, even the air itself was gray, so ultimate and ubiquitous that colour was everywhere around me.
The grey is forever surviving. The sky above my head is overwhelming. I am mesmerized by the wondrous atmospheric mix of grey clouds speaking depth into my heart.
The grey is slowly dissipating into a clear white, devoid of any black.
My grey sky is beautiful, but I fear that it is turning into a clear, crisp white.
I know now that I have been hanging on to these heavy, thought-provoking clouds of grey for too long. I do not really know how to let go of all the grey. I start by concentrating on the physical: erasing images from my computer lightens the palette considerably. I am starting to move into the white, clear, and obvious future.
Does this mean I have to let go of the liminal? I have become attached to this blog and the words on the clear white page at the inception of each post. I love the liminal and want to desperately cling to this unknown, presently addictive state of mind. But maybe it is time to finally let go of all the heaviness: forever.
The tinytiny drop of hazy rain falls softly on my skin.
Celestial Limininality 