Lying in Liminality

            “Confieso que he vivido.” Pablo Neruda

So here I am, curled up on a hard, green airport bench in sticky Panama. Women with stilettos and too-tight pants are waiting on line behind men with slicked hair and crisp shirts. A grey-haired, cartoon version of Bill Clinton is a head taller than everyone else on line and leans over, casually stooping to test his Spanish on the diminutive man behind him. Babies cry, business men pound their blackberries, and someone is stuttering in broken English. And although my shirt sticks to my body and my feet are too warm and soft inside my shoes, the sun has gone down and my overnight in this airport is dwindling.

And I’m here. Completely here- holding my nose and blowing to try and clear my ears and thinking about my parents and my brother and his lacrosse game which I’ll hopefully be home in time for tomorrow. And wherever I was forty-eight hours ago is of no consequence until an impossibly slender, effete man leans over my bench, squinting at the departure screen. He is so close I can see the tiny label on his pants pocket, which reads:

BOSS

HUGO BOSS

And there it is, the sign that hurls me back, sending this low ceilinged room full of anonymous masses flying away and replaces it with the family living room and the four loved ones I’ve left. How many times I sat on the couch, folding clothes, and turned over the sleeves of Mathias’ black t-shirt, the one with the “BOSS” label and thinking that if my surname were Boss, I would where nothing but this brand. I think dressing myself would always bring a tiny thrill with such labeled clothes. Like the canvas tote I’ve carried around South America which reads “Johann” beneath the bust of Bach.

Saturday night I fell asleep in Pucon and woke up in the smoggy urban din of Santiago. (In fact, that’s a harsh assessment. Actually, I had a pleasant day getting lost in the Parque Metropolitano, wandering the colorful Bohiemian neighborhood, and touring Pablo Neruda’s house. But no matter how pleasant it was, Santiago had the misfortune of being a sad postscript to my four months in Pucon.) Night busses are a magical thing- you can wave goodbye to your family and friends, seven of them gathered on the platform to see you off, the waves prolonged and faces growing more pained as the bus rolls backwards and creeps out of the station, then fall asleep, dream away the distance and awake worlds away to the attendant handing you a juice and cookie, as if to say “Good morning, welcome to Oz, have some sugar to soften the jolt.”

Two American girls came to the ranch on Saturday, forming part of my strange, last ride at Antilco. “Look, fellow countrymen to ease my transition,” I joked to Mathias. Their simple silliness saddened me though, and as one leaned down and ruffled her horse’s mane, saying “Good Gurrrl- that’s what I always say to my dog- kinda the same right?!,” I realized just how much I might be losing by coming home.

And I led my last ride with a detached melancholy, thinking I should be sadder, wishing I had a more electric group my last day, taking in the yellowing trees, rocky pastures, tumbling river with that forced moment-for-moment recollection that isn’t genuine but is summoned when you know “next time” isn’t anytime soon.  It was a simple whimper of a ride. Even the volcano exhaled.

Now I have this structurally appropriate liminal phase which I will spend in its entirety trying to get comfortable on a hard, green bench. Here I am nowhere. Despite having spent around twenty-three hours in its airport, my passport says I’ve never entered Panama. Four tiny letters on a man’s pants pull me to Pucon; everything else tugs me to Montauk. I am strung to both without access to either. Like the moments when you’ve realized your dream is just a dream but aren’t yet awake.

So I will lie here on this bench, dining on chocolate and finishing The Unbearable Lightness of Being, which is an appropriately contemplative book for my philosophical liminality, until I fall asleep. Then, another night will disappear and I will be that much closer to home.