In between

As a city dweller, I like to play tourist and explore new-to-me niches around my own neighborhood. I live on the border between residential and industrial zones, so the latter is often where I go. I find there are typically harsh, sudden boundaries between these spaces, like someone drew between a chalk line between them, as though to say “Life is here, but not over there.”

There is a strange beauty to industrial spaces in stasis, not actively fulfilling their purpose: a warehouse with no trucks, a port with no people. The spaces aren’t lifeless, or desolate, or dystopian. But in their in-between state, they are uncomfortable. They are designed to be moved through, to be experienced at one specific, orchestrated moment when you occupy a specific role. Otherwise, the illusion breaks. They weren’t intended to be sat in and observed while at rest, and doing so almost feels like an intrusion.

I don’t think this is unique to urban liminal spaces. Not long ago I walked through an empty corn field. It was early spring, the ground was still mud and dead corn stalks from the previous season. Like the port with no people, the field had a purpose that it was not actively fulfilling. It was at rest. Small critters roosted in the brambles on the edges, and birds flew overhead. It was peaceful, but still left me with the feeling that this was not a place to “be.”

I found this interesting. Why would I have a similar reaction to two very different in-between environments? What is it about them that creates discomfort? Shouldn’t the natural space feel better, calmer? Digging a bit, I think it may be that a natural space, like the corn field, in an in-between state is returning to equilibrium. It’s going back to nature. The industrial space, the warehouse or port, in its liminal state is lonesome, abandoned. The absence of people is more pronounced. But find that both cases, these in-between spaces are little reminders that eventually the world will be without us, individually and collectively.

We are temporary, and it can be uncomfortable to be reminded of that.