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| Morning coffee line at Detroit Metro Airport, Saturday 2/18/2023 |
Liminal spaces and times connect a situation that was before and another one that is after the event or ritual. It is this in-between status that can be unsettling since it is neither here nor there. This 7:30 a.m. photo shows the terminal concourse traffic Saturday looking in the direction of the morning coffee drinkers lined up as others pass by in various states of leisure or haste. After 30 minutes the number doubled. People present at the airport gate area fit into many different types: foreign or domestic, seasoned travelers and first-timers, business and leisure, fulfilling a dream or fulfilling an obligation, variation in age-gender-generation-region-income/SES, group trip versus lone traveler, and so on. Then there are aircrew both new and old-hands who may know this "workplace" like the back of their hand. Similarly, the concessions workers know the concourse area very well, hardly paying attention to the ebb and flow of passengers and crew. Some workers are there daily, others are project or limited-time contractors. Still others are responsible for the infrastructure, rather than retail business with travelers: cleaners, security, maintenance, or the person in a high-visibility vest marked in all capital letters, "contract auditor" (employed from 3rd party lowest bid agency? or full-time airport worker whose job is checking on contract business performance?).
Depending on the person's status (long-term home base in the terminal building versus just passing through to some distant destination), they will notice the surroundings of the place and the people there is different ways. Someone who knows the place like a "local resident" will see small changes or positive and negative details that people just passing through probably do not see or do not consider significant. A solitary traveler may be aware of the building, the weather, and go one to reflect on the subject or about any other topic that is triggered by airport impressions. But a couple, family, or group tour may confine their attention to the social bubble they occupy at the moment. Probably only an architecture or engineering fan will pause to scrutinize the concourse features and decisions going into the building. With travelers' and workers' minds in so many places, few will consider the long scale of weather changes, although momentary attention on a sunrise or sunset, stormy changes, and so on may draw the eye of many who are in the building.
This portrait from the Detroit Metropolitan Airport (DTW) on Saturday morning gives hints of the familiar metaphor about a lifetime or a daily frame of lived experience parallels the nature of leaving one's familiar home area to visit a place for the first time or one seen many times. For example, just like the diversity of people whose paths cross this morning, in life there is a similar intersection of strangers, occasionally punctuated by a spark of recognition when seeing someone known elsewhere. And the mild sense of anxiety when moving through an unfamiliar place like an airport concourse is also like the times of life when there is a lack of familiarity. Furthermore, the "tunnel vision" of travelers in search of their assigned gate fits with the kinds of people in life who focus on a goal to the exclusion of the surrounding situation and its ambience or possible meaning. As well, some people in the world are very much "passing through" rather than dwelling on the here and now of a locale: their body is present, but their mind is engaged with future plans and opportunities and threats. For people who see the world from the perspective of having arrived at the destination (not looking for someplace far away) like the concourse retail workers or the airport authority, there comes a sense of settled ease or non-striving. They are in their workplace, on duty, fulfilling employer expectations. Finally, the number of people who stop to reflect on all of this are relatively few and far between, too. If the airport represents a complex habitat with layers and layer of design and engineering know-how, most of those working or traveling take it all for granted, just like life itself that so often goes unexamined and unappreciated. So, watching the streams or food traffic of the airport terminal concourse offers a kind of mirror to the human experience: mortality, traveling alone or in the company of others, sometimes settled but other times on the way to other destinations. All these layers and facets intersect moment by moment, putting together fellow travels - of the airport, or of life's roads.
In conclusion, pause to look around at the many lives co-present and moving at different speeds. You may well see yourself in the picture, too.
