There’s just something about twilight that makes me feel like I’m liminal, not just in a place that’s between times of day, but between different worlds. The moment when you think you’re not just watching when your part of the world is rotating away from the sun as it sinks under the horizon. But, the moment where you believe that when you just briefly catch the glimpse of another world with different possibilities than your own. The colors seem brighter despite the setting sun. This is especially true when one is in a liminal space all its own.
Liminal spaces have fascinated humanity for millennia, bringing about the same feelings that their descendant is feeling now. Places such as crossroads, bridges, springs, caves, and, of course, shorelines. As one looks out towards the sky and sea and the jetty that stops just within your eye’s reach, they seem to go on forever and it stretches to where you can’t see anymore, and you have to let your mind just wander. You wonder what’s out there. The islands. The boats. The people. The waves. That’s not even getting into exploring what lies above your head, above the clouds, high in the atmosphere, or exploring what lies below, under the ocean as it makes one feel so tiny and insignificant on this water planet. That vastness is all you can see as one looks out at the bridge of two words that is the shore.
Twilight brings on the contrasts as the bright blue with its sunny day colors start to retire as darker shades of blue appear following the vanishing trails of the sun’s light. The blue fades into white as it gets brighter while the clouds’ colors go one of two ways. They could lighten in the way one would see in a Renaissance painting, imagining that the gods and angels are frolicking and flying just above your head, spying on the human realm. They could also darken, creating black and grey clouds covering the remaining light blue sky, heralding the coming of the night. Sometimes, the darker clouds will remain scattered, hopefully guaranteeing one a nearly clear night sky to see the stars and the moonshine over the water. In the first photo, the sky is a strip between the darkening clouds as the bottom clouds fill up the space it has not filled yet. In the second photo, the clouds are still white as they speckle a brightened blue sky. The twilight colors of pink and purple outline the horizon, spreading upwards to consume the rest of the soon fading blue sky.
