Intelligent Frugality and Liminality - Part Four

Most people do not really know much about appropriateness at all.

They know a little bit about habits.

They may know a little bit about expectations.

They do not really know much about freedom.

They live their lives as though they are constantly in a state of liminality.

They do not practice intelligent frugality, or even appreciate it.

Intelligent Frugality and Liminality - Part Three

If you live in a small space, you may be well aware of the problems related to inadequate room for storage.

While intelligent frugality will always be associated with continuity, liminality will always be associated with change.

Projects are associated with liminality.

You may or may not have participated in any of the discussions in the sitting room here.

You may or may not have noticed the notes for you on the shelf in the little library.

You may or may not have sought a temporary or permanent virtual residence in this digital vicinity.

What are the current transitions you are experiencing?

How do you know you do not mistake liminality for limerence?

You may or may not have offered to help in the kitchens here, or the garden, the attic or the administrative work shed.

Do you consider the development of good cultures to be projects?

Do you consider the maintenance of good cultures to be ongoing activities?

By definition, human communities are inhabited by people familiar with each other quite well, especially in comparison to strangers.

Many community problems, and societal problems more widely, are associated with impulsiveness, including in relation to community organisations, charities and social groups.

Do you consider conflict to be liminal?

Do you usually associate the media with virtual liminality?

Why have you been invited to experience Frugality Cottage? 

Who invited you here?

Who has placed the notices on this noticeboard for you to interpret?

Have you already experienced part one in this series of introductions?

If not, please catch up as quickly as possible.

There is a sense of urgency here at present.

Do you usually associate liminality with interviews?

Do you usually associate greetings and goodbyes with liminality?

Do you consider openings and closings to be liminal?

Have you already experienced part two in this series of introductions?

If not, please catch up as quickly as possible.

Do you consider all conscious learning to be liminal?

Do you often feel ambiguous about your own feelings or otherwise confused about them?

Do you usually associate the ambiguous with the liminal?

Do you usually associate confusion with the liminal?

Do you usually associate the marginal with the liminal? 

Do you usually associate attics with high culture?

Do you usually associate cellars with low culture?

Do you usually associate virtual cottages with liminality and other transformational experiences?

Have you already experienced at least a few of the other introductions here?

If not, please catch up as quickly as possible.

 

• The Cottage and Time
• The Cottage and Peace
• The Cottage and Freedom
• The Cottage and Simplicity
• The Cottage and the Key

 

What do you already know about Frugality Cottage and its garden?

• The Cottage Garden - Part One
• The Cottage Garden - Part Two

• The Cottage Itself - Part One
• The Cottage Itself - Part Two

 

What do you know about the workshops conducted here? 

• The Cottage and Industries - Part One
• The Cottage and Industries - Part Two
• The Cottage and Industries - Part Three
• The Cottage and Industries - Part Four

• The Cottage and Creativity - Part One
• The Cottage and Creativity - Part Two
• The Cottage and Creativity - Part Three
• The Cottage and Creativity - Part Four

• The Cottage and Kindness - Part One
• The Cottage and Kindness - Part Two
• The Cottage and Kindness - Part Three
• The Cottage and Kindness - Part Four

 

Have you attended any of the creative workshops here?

The Cottage and Competence 

Do you usually associate births, marriages and deaths with liminality?

Do you usually associate liminality and the liminal with the sacred?

The liminal may or may not be experienced as the sublime at any particular moment.

 

Yet the liminal is always transitional.

 

It may involve a change from the traditional to the modern.

 

It may involve a change from the modern to the timeless.

 

It may involve a wide variety of changes.

 

Yet the liminal always involves the process of change itself.

 

It exists in and as a boundary, an edge, in a time and place of uncertainty.

 

It is where the known and unknown mingle.

 

It is where patterns meet chaos, night meets day, and sleep meet awakening.

Intelligent Frugality and Liminality - Part Two

Where do you imagine this noticeboard to be situated, in your mind's eye, if not actually physically?

What have been your experiences of entranceways and passageways and hallways and alleyways and pathways and edgeways and boundaries and borders and reception areas and gateways and gatehouses and bridges?
 
How do you imagine the neighbourhood in which Frugality Cottage is situated?

What have been your previous experiences of liminality, possibly including rites of passage?

How do you imagine the entranceway to this virtual cottage?

How do you imagine the cottage gardens?

What have been your previous experiences of cottages, including this one?

How do you think about persuasiveness in relation to liminality?

Do you know the folk song Early One Morning?

Do you know the folk song Fare Thee Well?

Both are about parting.

Do you usually associate folk music with cottages and country air?

Do you know the folk song Country Gardens?

Have you ever attempted to turn a harshly bland suburban area into a gentle reminder of rural living?

Intelligent Frugality and Liminality - Part One

This cottage entranceway is virtually situated, fleetingly, at the forefront of your consciousness, as is this noticeboard, but how long will you remain here?

When you entered Frugality Cottage today, you may have noticed that there are no noticeable internal doors.

There is this noticeboard and little else to be perceived in this very small digital space.

If you have already explored the virtual neighbourhood around Frugality Cottage, you may have noticed the tall, unpainted corrugated iron fences signify three boundaries of the cottage garden.

Along the front of the garden, however, adjoining the Social Media Quadrangle, is a low, unpainted wooden picket fence with a solid wooden gate in the middle.  The gate is unpainted too.  It has been deliberately rusticated.

When you passed through the gateway, you may have wondered whether the rustication was, instead, a sign of neglect, abandonment and poor maintenance.

The gate is easy to open.  Its hinges do not squeak.  It closing mechanism is gentle and quiet.

The gateway is wide enough for a wheelchair or pushchair or pram or shopping trolley or walking frame.  The seemingly smooth flagstone pathway is never slippery.

The garden here is known here as the garden of sustainability. 

In city and suburban settings, and even in country towns and villages, the rusticated is often mistaken for the dilapidated and the untidy.

Yet the rustic displays the passage of time, as does life itself.

If you are not particularly familiar with the English language, even if you are a native English speaker, you may have looked up the meaning of frugality in a dictionary.

If you are not familiar with cottages, you may have sought the meaning of that word, too.

 

You may consider hyperlinks to be like doors or gates or windows or envelopes.

You may or may not have noticed that the text above contains no hyperlinks.

If you have already sought a dictionary definition of liminality, what did it say?

Did you open a physical dictionary or a web page to find the meaning of the word?

Perhaps you also looked up a definition of kitsch.

You may even have looked up the subliminal and/or the sublime.

If you do not have much experience of digital worlds, you may even have looked up the meaning of hyperlink.

 

In the back fence of the garden of sustainability is a hidden gate.  It leads to a district mainly consisting of rows of cottages.

The entire little village of cottages is surrounded by corrugated iron fencing and hidden gateways.  The residents wish to keep out would-be tourists and other intruders.

 

Although cottages are usually associated with people, they may also be the homes of pets, livestock and/or vermin.

There are no pets or livestock associated with this cottage, or the nearby village.

Safe management practices are in place to keep away vermin and other transmitters of diseases.

There are also good management practices in place to prevent other problems.

It is not possible to experience the nearby village, and become a member of its community, without first gaining adequate experience here.

The village beyond the garden of sustainability is not a village for retirees.  Nor is it a village for families, or children.  It is not a village for university students.  Nor is it a village for commuters.

It is certainly not a village for non-residents or second-home owners.

Keeping out strangers and uncommitted members is very important to the residents. 

How do you assess locations?

 

Once upon a time, in a cottage, far, far away, there lived - and died - many unknown people.

There were newborn babies and unwell infants and adolescents with tuberculosis and young women in childbirth and young men with injuries from war.

Many died before they reached middle age.

That cottage may possibly still exist near to where you are right now, but far, far away from your awareness.

 

You may even have inhabited such a place.

 

You may still do.

 

Liminality is associated with the temporary rather than the permanent though it may be a metaphorical doorway or gateway into experiences of permanence, or maturity. 

 

You may or may not be familiar with the liminal.  You may mistake it for the subliminal.

You may associate tourism and travel and transport with liminality.

 

You may be involved in assisting liminal experiences whilst providing care, whether towards persons with disabilities, persons in childhood, persons at the other end of the lifespan or non-human animals.

 

You may associate liminality with the end of perceived normality. 

 

You may associate liminality with the end of continuity.

 

You may associate liminality with spirituality. 

 

 

Here are two Wiktionary links you may find helpful:

Liminal

Liminality



Here are a few Wikipedia links you may find helpful:


Limen

Liminal

Liminality

Sublimation

Subliminal stimuli

Sublime

Sublime language

Transition

Social influence

Persuasion

Ascribed characteristics

Ascribed status

Achieved status

Grade

Gradient

Transitional care