When the afternoon weather changes, and the sky darkens when it normally wouldn’t, I check to see what time it is. These crepuscular moments are so fascinating. But wait! What the heck is crepuscular??
I love that word, but it’s so obscure that I don’t use it much. You know that time when it’s no longer day, but not quite evening? Most folks call it twilight. Which, by the way, refers to both the time just before dawn, as well as just before dark. Anyway… Those times of day, and that kind of light, is what’s called crepuscular. Leave it to the ancient Romans to coin a term for that short-lived break between night and day, on both ends.
Back to those wonderful times. The light feels like it’s suspended, just hanging there waiting for the air to resolve itself one way or the other. That happens also on those summer afternoons when a storm may be brewing. The world holds its breath, waiting for the clouds to firm up into thunderheads and shoot out fragments of lightning. It hasn’t happened yet…but any minute now…
I think that’s what gave Monet that luminous shade of lavender in his famous water lily paintings, or the ones of the river Seine. In the real world, those moments usually don’t last long. Either the clouds break up, or the sky starts rumbling, and the moment fades. But for the time it is there, I love to go outside and feel the atmosphere. (Unless there’s a tornado watch!) It doesn’t last, which is what makes it so…crepuscular.
Those liminal times, the times between one thing and another, are not found just in times of day. Border times are everywhere. One of my favorites is not from the natural world at all. It’s at the airport, of all places. Everyone there is in a liminal moment. We all wait for the adventure, the travel, to begin. We’ve sloughed off the everyday world and are caught in that liminal moment when we are neither “here,” in our normal world, nor yet at the new “there.” Caught between.
Times like that can become chunks of reality, of course, as we perhaps chat with a stranger, or take time to pick up some food. Personally, I love to people-watch, which feeds into my habit of creating characters for future stories. Sometimes it’s an unusual hairstyle or piece of clothing. More often, it’s faces: shapes, colors, cheeks, lips, eyebrows, facial expressions and gestures. Such fun! For me, that liminal moment, between being on the ground to boarding and flying away, is a rich border to mine for diamonds.
Waiting for something to happen can be either frustrating, or a chance to recognize a liminal moment. Take a breath, hold it, and realize you’ve removed yourself for a moment from the hubbub around you. A small personal liminal moment to rejuvenate and renew. Exhale and step out to begin again.