Anthropologically,
liminal experiences are related to rituals and rites of transformation, where
one sheds their previous skin in preparation of wearing another. It is not the transformation, which is, as
Derrida would have it, the two antipodal states, beginning and end, facing each
other across the Ginnungagap, defining one another in their opposition. Rather, liminality exists in the actual act
of transforming, in the middle ground where one is changing, and therefore
neither what one was before NOR what one will be after. Liminality is the vertigo you experience
stepping from one reality to another, moving between states but in
neither. Between worlds, in an ambiguous
state of potentiality, of time, and existence.
On the threshold.
Liminality
exists as a function of human consciousness, an attribute of the editing and
ordering and investigating our brains undertake in trying to piece together a
sensible picture of the complex world around us. Just as a human must be present to hear the
falling tree (and, thereby, give it meaning beyond the physics of molecular
vibration), so too can a human read the liminal landscape.
Geoliminality
is the investigation of the borders we have drawn in the world around us. Some of these borders reflect the underlying
structure of the natural world (physiography, geomorphology, stratigraphy,
tectonic boundaries, biomes, ecosystems, etc), and some reflect the overlying
structure built by humans and human activity (agriculture, natural parks,
mines, urban centers, wilderness, etc).
All are interpreted through the lense of liminality, of finding and
experiencing the threshold between states, and thereby experiencing change.
The
journal “Samizdat” is a communication from the field of geoliminal research. It is a transmission, sometimes clear and
sometimes garbled, that offers observation, experimentation,
interpretation. Some of things in here
are true, some of them false; all are real, even if only for a moment, when you
stand on the threshold.
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