Liminal

Liminal

Airport terminals, stuffy and somehow freezing, eerily silent in the wee hours of the morning when the few red-eyed flyers exchange the occasional nod and heavy sigh like silent monks as they try to make themselves comfortable on the cold, sectioned metal benches.  But not too comfortable-  Flight control likes to change gates to the other side of the port with only a single, half-garbled announcement.  "Bunch of sadistic devils.“  The woman next to me curses, not realizing how correct she is.  One of the other travelers blesses himself and maintains his silence.

Otherwise it is the middle of the day and full of the stickiness and undulations of the crowds. The air goes from stuffy and freezing, to stuffy and reeking of a thousand kinds of armpit.  Some people like to compare mass-travelers to cattle, but I’ve seen cattle, and cattle are a lot more organized and patient.  Parents hiss at small children who bolt up and down the terminal, shrieking in terror and glee, unheeding.  They are the only ones who can perceive the true nature of the situation-  they, the people they love and a hundred strangers are about to be crammed into an explosive-propelled tube, and react appropriately.

It doesn’t matter which ‘port it is- sure, some of them have better heating or less-disgusting food, but really, they’re all the same.  Nobody lives there.  Event the staff are migratory, coming in every day from dozens of miles away.  The things that stay in airports can’t really be described as living.  Lost maybe. Trapped definitely.  The same white-haired man in the brown overcoat is buying butterscotch candies every time I’m in Atlanta.  He’s going to see his granddaughter in Columbus, he says. We always say hello, he tips his hat like a gentleman and I wonder what happened to his eyes.

There are gates that do and do not exist.  Gate A51 in DIA is one of the more famous ones.  You can walk up to literally every gate present and count them- A48, A49, A50, A52, A53.  They got rid of it when they were re-modeling the terminal, they say, had to keep the old numbers due to regulations.  But if you listen between the calls for so-and-so to pick up a white courtesy phone, or that the threat level is orange, keep an eye on your bags etc.  "Flight 456 Leaving from gate A51 in ten minutes.” You will see people que up and get on board.  Do not interrupt them.  They are going where they need to go.

There’s also rest stops along and freeway- You can actually sleep on those benches, but not for long. Montanna has excellent rest stops, Ohio is a goddamn disaster.  Just stay out of the midwest in general if you can help it.  There is nothing for humanity there. Again, where you are only sort of matters- it’s all checkered floor slicked in thousands of layers of disinfectant, only contributing to the grime at this point.   Maps of whatever highway you’re on, road safety advisories, the large poster telling you that Meth will turn you and everyone you love into toothless deviant sex zombies.  Reality is much worse, but reality has a better imagination than the DEA.

Families huddle from the weather in the covered picnic benches outside, regardless of the actual conditions.  It could be perfectly ambient, pouring sunshine with happy little birds hopping about and they still recoil, peering over their shoulders at the space behind the stop.  Sometimes, a child will break off from them, and get close to the edge- peering into the trees or grass or the river.  They bolt when they see things peering back.

Maybe you’ll get lucky and there’s some sort of historical plaque. Go.  Read it. Imagine the people it talks about- the people who worked this mine, the explorers that found it, the native beings they displaced.  They don’t usually mention the last one, but they exist and they deserve your thoughts more than anyone.  These stories live here, in a place where no-one else does.  Think of them, and carry their ghosts out with you. They will be grateful and pay you back in kind.

The road is a strange place. There are a great many places where it repeats itself several times over, a mobius strip with a speed limit. The evergreen forests on the northwest coast, trees endlessly appearing through the fog.  Cattle-plains in Montana- that fence is infinite and you have seen that Angus Bull seven times now.  The entire state of Nevada.  (Vegas isn’t really in Nevada.  It’s a pocket dimension caught in the center of a looping current.  This creates interesting transportation logistics, which is why, despite allegedly being in the middle of cattle-country and nowhere near the coast, lobster is cheaper than rib-eye).  

Other times, it layers in with another dimension.  There are gates on I-80 between Rawlins and Laramie to keep people from driving through when the maw to hell opens up.  I got through five minutes before the gate went down and entered the frozen edges of the ninth circle.  White, white, nothing but white swirling in all directions.  There was no road in front of me, and none behind. The best I could do was to try to guess at the shape of the road by the differing textures of white.  

Cars sometimes have extra passengers.  The only reason I made it off of I-80 alive was the something sitting in the passenger seat beside me, alternately reassuring me of my ability and chanting something against the storm outside.  It was much larger than I am, intricately twisting and rustling, and blue. I didn’t dare look.  It’s not good to stare directly at a god.  But they were kind, and thanked me as I let them off at the sushi restaurant at the interchange of I-80 and 287.  "Riverton’s a shithole.“ They laughed in half a dozen voices.