My garage is a liminal space. 

When I sit in my car, I’m only temporarily there — whether coming or going. I generally don’t linger in that here/not here place. Today I lingered; today I sat in the driver’s seat and tried to allow in the feelings of spontaneous temporariness. 

It felt like a metaphor. It seemed as though we’ve all been lingering — to a greater or lesser degree — in a temporary space. Everything seemed to make sense for me up until November of 2016 when you know who got elected. Then when stuff started making sense again, we were hit with Covid-19. And as we seemed to be getting a handle on that, you know who 2 began butchering people in Ukraine.

It’s tough to get our emotional footing back, personally, pandemically, politically. Making things make sense can feel like a puzzle with only middle pieces and no edges. 

You could argue too, if you feel argumentative, that I’ve been in a liminal space since cancer and a transplant derailed my journey. Oh, you still feel like arguing? Then you’re certainly going to ask about that time even further back when I lost three journalism jobs in the space of a year. That was minimal liminal. 

I hate arguing with you. So I’ll just concede that college was also a liminal time; my three internships were liminal times; heck, even my first job where I met my future wife was liminal in that it was classified as a permanent part-time position. I guess your point is that I’ve always found myself in liminal places for shorter or longer periods — my garage or the dozen years since I caught cancer.

Even this piece I’m writing is liminal. I existed decades before these words fell onto the screen and I’ll remain for decades after the last period. 

And then … 

Uncle Chris Coover

And then as I’m finishing this, I find out my uncle just left his own liminal space, dying overnight. Parkinson’s was his in-between place. His life’s work, his passion was assessing rare documents and manuscripts for NYC auction houses and Antiques Roadshow — perhaps most notably,  On the Road typed by Jack Kerouac on 120 feet of Teletype paper.

In our sadness, we are also relieved that he has backed out of his temporary garage. It was a sad and lonely place to park.

He has now joined Kerouac on another road, accompanying others from our family rocketing across the Universe, exploring new realities, new dimensions, the great next.

“What is that feeling when you’re driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? — it’s the too-huge world vaulting us, and it’s good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.”

— Jack Kerouac, On the Road