Fireworks Over Liminal Space

Lighting up an unknown future

Darkness was almost upon us. But darkness had been there for weeks already for me. I was standing in a field by a summer carnival with a crowd of happy strangers. They were all ages and all unknown to me, except for my father and sister.

My family also knew none of these people. The show was about to begin after an evening of carnival rides and candy apples. They were not Fourth of July fireworks — -merely another carnival attraction in mid-July, but the crowd were so exuberant, it seemed like a holiday

In New Jersey, then and now, the school year ends in late June, so the fireworks probably seemed to celebrate that for many in the crowd. But I wasn’t happy about the school year ending. I was mourning the end of my school years in the town we had just left behind.

Like so many American families, we moved to a new home between school years. It was the summer of 1979. I hadn’t met anyone in our new town yet. I looked at the crowd of fireworks viewers and wondered who, if any, out of the crowd I would know in a few months.

Would some of these kids who looked vaguely my age soon be my best friends? Would they tease me for being “new”? Would they ignore me? Would any of these adults be my teachers?

Liminal space, according to Wikipedia, is broadly defined as, “a place or state of change or transition”. Physical liminal spaces have become wildly popular on the internet in the past few years, particularly in the form of liminal space photography, such as this:

and this:

Liminal spaces also exist in time, like the hour we wait in line for a ride at Disney World or the Department of Motor Vehicles. They also exist in our minds as the tension between when one part of our lives is over and a new part is about to begin: that summer between graduation and a new job, or the time between the engagement and the wedding.

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