The Book of the City of Ghost Cats

I have always been interested in and felt an affinity, I suppose, with liminal spaces and beings. Liminal meaning ambiguous. A middle space where things are not quite over being one way and have not quite fully begun either. Someone who is not quite a part of the group, but nor are they outside of it. It is to stand at a threshold – to stand on the diving board – to be always almost stepping into becoming and always almost giving up what was.

I think it is, of course, bound up in the nature of an expatriate. Where you are what your country of origin made you, you are the music, the culture, the air of a place. Your bones have the terroir from your given beginning.

Mine, foothills dirt and creek water made of snowmelt and high, thin air. I have Columbine, I have Outdoor Lab, I have sugar cookies thick with powdered sugar frosting, I have green chile, I have Blucifer rearing back, and I have my feet stomping on the brakes to receive the Blessing of the Deer God who freezes on sacred nights on the back road before leaping into the dark that surrounds. It is entirely unique to my experience of growing up as me in Colorado. Never to be reproduced.

And yet, in this role, this form, you’re no longer physically there in the home of your heart. You’re taking on new customs, watching new sorts of ads on TV (which you can catch yourself calling the telly), you’re aware of a new universe where people believe, but believe differently, sing but sing differently, laugh but laugh differently. Even by degrees, it registers. Registers as beauty, as fear. There’s Roman ruins, there’s rivers where the Vikings brought their Futhark deep into the countryside, there’s even now a clever fox padding through the trees as the sun softens the blue-black night into gold and pink and day.

It’s the nature of travel: the death of ignorance. You’re something now that you can’t ever un-become. You can’t un-know a place that keeps you and feeds you and raised up your love and tells you its stories as you walk down its cobblestones. But neither can you disappear into it. Not completely. You’re an expatriate standing on a threshold. A creature homed away from home. It’s a Limbo I am limbo-ing in fascination to reach.

Because I’m now moved out from the apartment that sheltered me and was a little sanctuary after my parents died. When we sold their house and I sold my condo and I didn’t know what exactly would happen next. My boyfriend was visiting me and I was visiting him and there was always a reason…a birthday, a reunion, a game…to organize a trip.

But now, this is getting serious. What we’re talking about now, well, this is just being. This is grocery shopping and people grousing about politics and potholes. The beautiful boring shit. It’s meeting new people, maybe making new friends, eating beans adjacent to toast. All this with a chunk of my life behind me. Will it be at all like I’ve hoped? Will I get brave at the crucial moments? Will I give it the necessary time and awe?

Always, I am ahead of myself.

Now: My car is soon to be gone, I’ve turned over my keys. I am going to ship five boxes of all my personal effects over and then see if that’s enough. I’m attempting frustrating doctor visits before I have my first taste of the NHS, all the while thinking of my mother. And how liminal she might now be. How I like to think of her as still a little bit here with me. In the ladybugs, in the birdsong, in my sister’s bright summer colored roses. As still a little bit involved in things. Maybe not everything would be so up in the air that way. Maybe my back wouldn’t need to bend so far to get through all this. They say there needs to be more scans, not to worry, everyone needs more imaging, of course, but the sooner the better. But the next appointments are in September. Weeks after I’m due to be gone. Sigh, well. We’ll get it sorted.

Now: I float.