Unlimited Liminal
I am simultaneously both the closest and the farthest from God that I have ever been in my life; I like to reflect on all things, during all times, and in all ways. Sometimes I think back to when life was simpler, sort of like how this morning feels already a world that has gotten away from me completely and is tracing it’s way beyond a horizon that now stretches far before me, limping further towards obscurity unremembered, bloody, and battered like a stray dog hobbling along the avenir next and across the street . . .
During a conversation last week, the topic of liminal spaces comes up when an area springs to my mind so succinctly that I immediately begin remembering it in a whole new light. I am speaking of the ballroom in the Congress Hotel on Michigan Avenue in Chicago. It is a place where time stands still, for those who know it. This is my recollection of the time that I had stumbled upon it’s threshold:
During this instance, my friend, O’Rourke, was enrolled at Columbia University a couple of blocks down, and from time to time during my visitations with him we would stroll amongst the hotel together while we were drunk/stoned. The ivories of the grand piano in the lobby were enough to keep us occupied for many hours. After my researching of this today, I have just read that some employees have made mention of this piano playing itself during odd hours of the night. O’Rourke and I relay our deepest apologies for the misunderstanding.
The time I remember gaining access to the ballroom we had been smoking on the fire escapes and wandering the many sprawling stairwells of the hotel, when suddenly the area I am speaking of appeared before us through what felt like secret passage.
The Congress Hotel Ballroom
We had entered the ballroom from the above balcony, so that may have added to the jarring moment of discovery to begin with. It seemed very closed off from the rest of the hotel, since I remember we had managed to drink almost an entire bottle of Jägermeister before we had even come close to reaching it.
The lights were on really dim, and I remember there might have been 4 or 5 tables spread about that were adorned with tablecloth and table settings. In comparison to the size of the room, it appeared very empty other than that. There was a microphone in the center of the room that was still hot that we started singing into. Not a single staff member of the hotel or any guest managed to enter into the room for the hour or so that we must have been in there, as we ran amok careless and carouse.
I have searched my archives and have unearthed an entry from my journal dating back to 2018 that was written on the same day that my story takes place above:
Deducting dissonance, I was palm-pyred with just about the calmness of a chandelier. We possessed the [promontory] and danced promenades about the procession, as O’Rourke goes on to tell me that his heralded pomegranate juice is good for the sex all the while in doing so. Maybe I will consider picking some up. First and foremost, we climbed the second story balcony and threw the spotlight onto the mirror ball. I was speaking into my bottle of Jägermeister the same way that one would talk to a houseplant, or while making a long distance call to their sister. The whole joint was covered in penguin puke, inside and out! [It was] as if we were the last bone blooded pricks that poorly remained at the party, until it was time to hail a cab back home . . .
O’Rourke had even brought his camera with him at the time as I remember that he had taken a photo of me while we were in the ballroom. Later that week, when combing through his photographs, he noticed that my face had completely vanished from the picture. It had appeared stark white where my face had been, as if the flash had been turned on, a distortion that was unmistakably paranormal. Rumor has it, that members of the bridal party have alleged not showing up in pictures in this ballroom as well.
My friend Marta told me after showing her the photo that the picture appeared to have a very “Tabula Rasa" type of energy. And when you get sent to hell, I believe that is what you’re going to get. There will be fire and brimstone, sure, but also the devil’s tricks — the sins of the flesh, that will wrap you up and slowly turn you into a demon by the use of duplicates, mimics, and replicas parading as God. Hell may even appear to one in the form of a room such as the one I am speaking of — some hellish facsimile of pleasure, while an underlying sense of unease, twisted and evil, pervades on . . . That is what the spirit of liminality conveys to me, anyway. The representation and/or likeness of unlimited possibility, because in it contains everything. Kind of like The Fool in tarot cards. Where the infinite potential of good and evil share the same thread of ‘No Longer’ and ‘Not Yet’ because they are both one and they are both the same.