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