Born Liminal

[smokingboot]

This weekend saw me at an event in Edinburgh entitled "Skelling, Skeklers and Guising. Exploring Liminality - celebrating Scottish folk magic and community traditions." Not a catchy title but an extraordinary event, full of exquisite music and proper chunky well-researched lectures. I loved it, and found myself musing about liminality.

Now I indulge myself, because such is my mood:

I learned that day that I am a liminal creature. Born of two different cultures and climes, in a place between them, even the name of my birth town,Devizes, means Boundary/Division. And then I was taken from there to another liminal place, Singapore, where I lived my early life. This is such a pleasant poetic idea I'm going to stick with it.

I have usually - not always - been treated like an outsider until I learned the cant of whichever group I wanted to join. There's never been that sense of automatic belonging, and sometimes I haven't understood the group well enough to keep to its definitions. That's cost me on occasion. But it's nice to understand it and consider my own adaptive techniques. It's also nice to be able to discard adaptation.

Being on the threshold also means I got to keep the outsider's eye; a true blessing, though not always a comfortable one. I've often been accused of analysing people as though they were insects under a microscope, inevitably by those who would rather be loved than understood. People really don't want to be understood too well, they'd rather have hugs. Well, I give good hugs, but I observe too, can't change that. On the other hand, sometimes the more I love, the less I see. Balancing between out and in, filtered and unfiltered... It's a strange tightrope and I fall off a lot.

But it's quite fun. I'm glad to be here.

So OK, taken the poetic conceit to this point, where from here? Ought to visit Singapore again.

Having just arrived in one of the most liminal places on Earth, my response is to wish to fly off somewhere else.

I make myself laugh.