Pat reconnects with an old friend
Pat reconnects with an old friend
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Research Notes:
Hey, this is Pat. And this is a letter to no one.
I hear you live in Chicago now.
It’s so odd that I don’t even know why you’re there or what lead to such a move. We were so close once. Talking every day, driving around chatting in my car, headed nowhere in particular. Until we slowly drifted apart as so many folks tend to do. But I like to think of myself as someone who clings so tightly to friendships. Maybe tighter than I should sometimes.
But, a truly close friendship, one where you feel you really understand a person, where you can trust them entirely with any little thought in your head. Where you’re just so interested in anything that comes out of their mouth. Or where you can simply share a comfortable silence, that feels more important than any other petty thing in these godforsaken lives of ours.
Sidebar; why do we use “where” in that context? A friendship where? It’s not a place certainly. I don’t think about it as much, but I guess we do commonly use “where” in reference to not just a location, but, as the dictionary says, also where, “at, in, or to what situation, position, direction, circumstances, or respect.”
Though that definition seems almost purposefully vague, I catch its drift and can certainly see how we use “where” to describe many states of simply being which is in and of itself some pretty vague stuff.
In searching for “where (not a place)” I found myself led down a bit of a rabbit hole as I found references to something called “nonplaces,” a term coined by the French anthropologist Marc Augé to refer to transient spaces where people do not remain for a significant period of time and in which they are specifically anonymous. Due to that fleeting and impersonal state they do not hold enough human significance to be regarded as "anthropological places.”
This of course leads into the concept of “liminal spaces,” which are very similar if not the same as these “nonplaces.” Liminal comes to us from the Latin, “limen” meaning ‘a threshold' which I find rather beautiful. Liminal spaces are often these transitional areas like hallways that, if photographed devoid of other people, often appear to us as eerie in a surreal sort of way, stemming from their familiar nature contrasted with a distinct lack of their normal context of use. When you’re walking through the halls of a hotel you often barely notice it at all, simply trying to get to your room and put down your bags or go to sleep. By photographing such a place, especially without a human subject onto which we can project ourselves, we separate ourselves from our use of the space and focus on that which we are supposed to just pass through without another thought and in doing so we notice the deep strangeness of such a location that is, in a way, not really a location at all; merely a transition point.
But in that sense what spaces do we have that are not always, in some way, a place of transition? The world is constantly shifting beneath our very feet and we ourselves are different from moment to moment, growing and changing.
Certain studies in anthropology speak of moments of liminality for people themselves, existing during the ambiguous state that occurs in between the progress of any sort of rite of passage, often a coming-of-age ceremony of sorts when a person no longer holds the status in a community that they have held up to this point, but as the process is not yet complete they do not yet possess the status that they will hold upon the end of such a ceremony.
During a rite of passage's so-called “liminal stage”, participants "stand at the threshold*" so to speak, between their previous way of life and a new way filled with new expectations, responsibilities, and power.
These transitional times of our lives are often things like graduations, bar-mitzvahs, Quinceañeras, or other such events, but in truth they just make concrete what is constantly happening throughout our lives. We are always changing who we are and how we choose to be in our society in small ways; little transitions every day. It’s as the Taco Bell cashier says in that tweet that’s been shared to death now, “Look buddy, it's transient, shifting like water.”
So how did we get to this point? Me and you I mean. There are no monumental ceremonies or rites of passage to mark the dwindling of friendships. There isn’t ever even really a goodbye.
Because you don’t really see it coming. You kinda just assume that you’ll see that person sooner rather than later, talk again on the phone in a few days, maybe hang out next weekend. But no no that weekend doesn’t work for me actually. I’m only in town for a few days and then I’m back on a plane headed across the country. Then it’s more awkward for some reason to ask to hang out the next time. And the next. Then maybe you stop asking at all. Maybe I did.
It’s no one’s fault really. We just… drift. Changing in ourselves and in our relationship to one another slowly, so slowly you barely even notice it; until you turn around and truly focus on those things that maybe you’re not supposed to see and the strangeness in the mundanity of your own life snaps into sudden focus. How different everything is now. How transient our entire lives are. How these liminal spaces and moments are not just the odd hotel hallways, but the very spaces in which our entire lives are built. Everything is between one thing and the other all the time.
I’m reminded of a quote that I first came across in an episode of the podcast 99% Invisible. The episode in question was about the story of Genie Chance, a radio personality at a small station in Anchorage, Alaska who, in 1964, continued to broadcast after the second biggest earthquake ever measured at the time, a whopping 9.2, had destroyed much of the town.
In the course of the episode they keep coming back to a quote from a former mayor of Anchorage who said,
“Even now I can look at the solid ground out the window and know that it’s not permanent. It can change anytime. It just moves. Everything moves.”
I like to think of bonds of friendship as beyond the reach of change. As unmoving, fixed points in the turbulent sea of our lives, but I know that they too, must shift with the current of time. But maybe, just maybe they can merely bend, and not break.
I’ll try to call you again soon.
I hope it’s nice out there in Chicago.
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This has been a letter to no one. If you think it’s about you, no it isn’t.
Our music is by Caleb Grant. Thank you Caleb. Artwork by me. Special thanks to Adam Sloves. Links to sources and research materials are in the show notes. Thank you for listening. Goodnight.