Is the current space I’m occupying a liminal space? Liminal would imply the in-between. Not quite here, not quite there – that place on the drive between Clifton and Camps Bay, when you’re beyond Clifton, but the sign for Camps Bay hasn’t appeared yet. There’s the road and the wide grey pavement, and the sea alongside it. A sea named, no matter that the suburb isn’t. It’s still the Atlantic Ocean – it doesn’t need the tarmac to be sign-posted for it to carry its own name, for it to hold the froth and foam that licks the rocks as the north wester exhales heavily, raggedly, onto the Atlantic seaboard.
Where am I now on this 8th day of September? Between what and what, between where and where? In the physical domain, I’m between Peak Road and Ranger, between no. 13 and no. 75. An impending move, at the end of this month, in road and number. And within it, an edging closer to no. 58 Ranger Road – the site of the first 45 years of my life. Not a full 45 years, but rather 19 or 20 ‘fulltime’, and the balance ‘part-time’.
What is it about – this moving towards, moving closer to the place from which I came? To live, for however long it might be, overlooking the reservoir – the very same reservoir, that for decades I lived adjacent to – a place then unfenced, where our young feet and imaginations ran wild and free.
What’s the meaning in this, the proximity to and prominence of the reservoir? What’s held in those two large concrete-cornered grass-covered rectangles, now carefully contained behind the tall, tight fencing and chain-locked gate? Water, of course, the superficial answer to the question of what’s held (within the reservoir). But what sits beneath the grass, the concrete casing, the wide pool of water and the pumps? Underneath all this – clay-thickened soil and rock. The rocks of ages and lineages. Lines and layers less concerned about the here-and-now, less attached to chronological time. Rather, by virtue of the depths to which they travel, lines and layers grounded and timeless, intrinsically connected to the cycle and wisdom of the seasons, to different sources of knowing and nourishing. Knowledge rooted in the soil, nourished and nurtured by the underground streams.
So, in this place between 13 Peak Road and 75 Ranger, what is the wisdom offered to me by the reservoir? What is it that I need to hear or feel? Is it about stillness or action? About attuning to the barely perceptible trickling of the stream, against an appreciation of the stream’s consistent contribution to the reservoir, and its ability, from its unseen depths, to support and sustain, when what is seen, is much less certain or understood.
And what of my commencing question about the space I’m in? Is it a liminal space?
Does it matter what it’s called, if it’s defined or not? What if I were instead to simply see myself as being in the place of ‘the soil and the stream’? A place beyond labelling or definition, the place of two elements – earth and water – elements vital to support whatever is to come, whenever and how ever that coming might be.
