i feel like coffee shops are the opposite of liminal spaces



i’ve done a decent amount of traveling and yeah there’s always places that aren’t quite real, that seem a bit out of time and out of real-space - threshold places. and those are great, i love them, the rest stations and 3am train stations and the ambiguity of reality there

but coffee shops are exactly the opposite of that, at least for me - anywhere in the world i can find somewhere to sit with my hands around a warm cup in a place that smells good and sounds like people, and it’s grounding, it’s a sense of place stemming from sensation rather than location. everything about them is very very real - the warmth and people and noise and familiarity even if you can’t read the characters of the menu.



i don’t know if this rings true for everyone, and i don’t know if there’s a better phrase for something that’sso emphatically not a liminal space, that’s a piece of reality wherever you are, even when the rest of the world is strange. but there will always be liminal spaces to pass through and it’s comforting to know that there will always be something like a coffee shop on the other side.

