LIMINAL SPACE

I recently returned from an Icelandic adventure. When you go to Iceland in June, you don’t see the aurora borealis. You see the sun. Iceland is an island made from volcanoes and an island of extremes. It’s well-documented as the land of fire (volcanoes) and ice (glaciers). Nearly twenty-four hours of sun in the summer and nearly twenty-four hours of darkness in the winter, hence the ability to see the fantastical northern lights when most other light has vanished. 

We were staying at a property in Hella in the southern region of Iceland. I went thinking that my full-light-blocking eye mask and the room-darkening blackout curtains would ensure sleep during the nights. Mostly wrong, but partly right. Each night, I could feel the energy of the earth and the sun beckoning me to walk outside in what appeared to be an after-sunset dusk at 1 AM. I tried to trick my body on that first night of our adventure—it would not be fooled. 

Sleep is important (as we all know), and it can make or break your day. I was determined to have a day—many days of this adventure—propelled by good sleep and deep, restful nights. This would be a sabbatical for me, but it also ended up being an awakening of sorts.

On night one, I put my eye mask within reach on my bedside table and pulled the curtains shut as I started my at-home nighttime rituals. This routine has served me well over the years. In fact, it’s basically foolproof most of the time for me, and that’s why I do it. Put up my phone and leave the screens alone. Lower my room lighting and the overall temperature of my space, shower, brush teeth, and moisturize my face. Cozy up in my bed with a stack of books and choose which one (or two) to read for the night. Check-in with my mood: do I want to dive into a memoir, a collection of creative non-fiction essays, young adult novel, historical fiction, contemporary fiction, other non-fiction, poetry? 

At home, I reliably have most of these genres in a rotating stack at my bedside, because I enjoy having a choice and having multiple books going at once. In Iceland, though, I only had four books to choose from. A bit limiting, but I made it work: two books that I brought from home (Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver by Mary Oliver and How Iceland Changed the World: The Big History of a Small Island by Egill Bjarnason) and two books by Icelandic authors that I bought at a local bookstore my first day in Reykjavik (before coming to Hella)— Independent People by Halldór Laxness (winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1955) and A Woman Looks Over Her Shoulder by Brynja Hjálmsdóttir (poetry).

I restlessly picked up each book and, in turn, set them back, fanned out on the coverlet next to me. Easy to switch between them that way, I thought to myself. I settled for How Iceland Changed the World. It was fun to read about the history and to also see reference to what I would be experiencing daily on this adventure. Inevitably, though, I would glance at the curtains, and the strip of light next to the wall would pull my attention so completely that I could not resist. Despite the temperature outside, it was hot in the room with radiant heat coming up from the floor. I knew it would be cool and breezy out there. At first, I thought I would just open the window, but upon feeling the cool, clean woosh of air as the window cracked the night, I grabbed my sweater and stepped out. 

Ahhhh… space. I could breathe. My body pinged at the light, and an initial rush of energy propelled me out to the hill that overlooked the lake on the property. It was late. Too late to be outdoors. I was jet-lagged, and I needed sleep. Or that is what I kept telling myself. But my body had a different inner knowing and a different story to tell. I stood there looking at the place where the sun had just “set” a few minutes before, an orange glow coloring everything and reflecting off the water. In that liminal space of midnight to 3 AM (when the sun would “rise”), everything looked like it was bursting with more color than I noticed during the day, but it also looked at peace, at rest. I took big, long, slow breaths, and my body began to settle like the landscape around me. It dawned on me a few minutes later that I felt like a nap. A nap would do. Naps make sense in the in-between.

I went back to my room, left the window open, pulled the curtains, and then turned out the light. I continued to take those long breaths with one hand on my upper chest and the other on my abdomen. What felt like moments later, I awoke, but it had been a few hours. That was a nice nap, I thought to myself. I got up, went to the bathroom, got some water, noticed the light at the edge of the curtain by the wall, and then I crawled back into bed. Maybe another nap, I thought to myself.

Sleep was elusive, but rest comforted me. I pulled the eye mask over my head and continued to breathe those long, slow deep breaths. I used the soothing rhythm breathing that I practiced before each of my writing sessions: inhale, hearing that gentle, supportive whisper of my compassionate self, "mind slowing down;" exhale, "body slowing down." Over and over with one hand on my heart and the other on my belly.

When I awoke a couple of hours later, I felt refreshed, rested. Naps are so fun, I told myself. It was half-past seven, the sun was high, and the air was still, but I could feel it revving my body, different from my experience when I stepped outside before my naps the night before. Coffee seemed like a good idea, so I made myself a cup and went out to watch the lake in the time before the bustle of the day's adventure. Again, a liminal space of in-between. 

I thought Mary Oliver might be a good companion for this time. I read a few of her poems and felt the familiar transmutation of mundane into magic whenever I read her poetry. And then I marveled at the complete feeling I had in this place of extremes that begs you into being in the in-between.