There is a liminal space in my house, which everyone calls the “Music Room”
It’s more like a corner, but it’s where we practice playing our instruments. Staying up late at night to practice with my violin or guitar was a normal experience growing up, but while others were motivated by their passion or their parents or just the fact that they’re close to the front and don’t want to be seen by the whole school screwing up, I was rather motivated by my quite literal fear of the dark.
I developed a little game from this, back then, where as long as I kept playing, I could avoid having to cross the threshold into the silent, dark house. And that was fine by me, but I got too tired eventually and would end up sprinting to my room.
The Music Room doesn’t have any doors but two tall entrances that don’t reach the ceiling. the wider one opens to the front door and the stairs, and the thin one opens to the little space where dishes are kept and coats are hanged. Neither of these places are very special when you stand in them, but for some odd reason, sitting in the Music Room always had this effect of making these areas seem… foreign. Like when you’re on vacation, you stay in a hotel. Every floor looks nearly identical, you feel relatively aware of where you are and don’t necessarily feel the need to expect anything other than a hotel room when you open the door.
Except you get to the room and find it’s not a room at all. It’s another hallway, of what looks like an entirely different building- but no. It’s the hotel. It’s really, really weird to find a hallway where there should be a room, but you go in thinking maybe your room is in there.
But the real reason I call this room a liminal space is because it’s an unspoken rule that nobody ever turns the light on when it’s daytime, ever. You never look at your reflection in the mirrors and you certainly don’t touch them. Always be aware that when you play something, it can be heard on the front yard. Food, for some reason, always tastes better when eaten in there by yourself. If you curl up on the couch during the day nobody can find you unless you want them to.
The room feels very uncomfortable when you first step in, even now, but once you start doing something in it a great sense of self-awareness will overcome you. And leaving the room during the day feels like emerging from a pleasant nap.
Leaving it at night feels like emerging from a cabin into the woods.
Coleen Ramos' 