Word of the Day

liminal

Main Entry: lim·i·nal
Pronunciation: \ˈli-mə-nəl\
Function: adjective
Etymology: Latin limin-, limen threshold
Date: 1884

1 : of or relating to a sensory threshold
2 : barely perceptible
3 : of, relating to, or being an intermediate state, phase, or condition

Almost exactly four years ago, at just this time of year, I learned a new word: liminal. It was the perfect description of what was happening at that time in my life and it is, while not the exact match it was then, very much a part of what I feel is taking place now. Sometimes, not often, it feels to me like there are countless pinpricks in the shell of the universe and that all the order is raining out, drop by drop, blending together and getting all mixed up in liminal ways that are hard for someone like me who creates patterns and algorithms everywhere--even where they do not exist--to understand.

Recent days have been like this. Interviews for jobs to which I never applied, conversations that I never dreamed would happen outside my imagination, email and phone calls and comings and goings and wow. Things are, in a wonderful scary exciting complicated scary delicious way, all brand new and the edge of my sensory threshold and my ability to understand it feels very close--or perhaps I have crossed it already and should just not try any more to understand.

To hang some proverbial meat on the metaphoric bones of all this:

•Yesterday I got not one, but two jobs for the next few months--neither of which I sought but both of which found me.

•This morning at a shop in town the owner was so overwhelmed with joy that I was her first customer of the Persian New Year, Nowruz, which she celebrates as part of her culture that she gave me everything for which I came free of charge with blessings for a healthy, prosperous, and happy new year.

•I spent the first part of the afternoon at Goodwill, buying my Purim costumes for this year (soon-to-be topic of another post later this evening) and the second part taking Mark and Rebecca to the airport for their two week honeymoon in Italy.

•I came home from SFO, finally, through two hours of bridge traffic, to an empty house and am now living entirely alone for the first time in almost a year.

•Later while I was shopping at Trader Joe's Aaron called me, in full Purim regalia, from Providence to brag to me about his excellent costume (independent contractor who built the gallows in Shushan, complete with union badge and construction helmet...hard to explain but very witty), to tell me he was about to chant his verses of the Megillah (the musical story of Purim that is recited the evening before the holiday, and on the holiday itself, and throughout the entire festivities it seems), and to wish me Chag Sameach, a happy holiday.

•To try and clear my head I went running during which time two completely incongruous people: a young Orthodox Jewish woman swathed head to toe in various sarongs and shawls and scarves, Berkeley-style, bundling her two preschool-aged children dressed as a lion and Queen Esther into their minivan to go hear the Megillan read at the temple, and a more-than-middle-aged nun in habit and head covering, rosary wrapped between her fingers as she walked to church for Maundy Thursday Mass.

•Winter is over and it is the first day of Spring.

Now I am home and am going to make dinner, then put my Goodwill finds in the dryer and prepare my costume's accessories before making lunch and going to bed. I have to be at school quite early tomorrow to teach First Grade, or shall I say a very famous substitute will be arriving in First Grade in the morning dressed to the hilt not for Purim but just in her everyday outfit. Can you imagine who I might be? If you know my usual pseudonym you will quickly be able to guess :)

Until then I plan to breathe deeply and instead of feeling washed out with the tide as the universe's order slowly recedes like so many waves on the dark windswept beach where I learned this Word of the Day in the first place, I will try to look up at the pinpricks in the universe's shell and see them for what they really are: the stars in the night sky that covers us all.

Happy Spring and Purim and Nowruz and Easter Weekend and everything to you, wherever under the sky you are right now.